WASH Library title: Investing in sanitation for children in East Asia and the Pacific

UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office -Bangkok, TH, 2008. Investing in sanitation for children in East Asia and the Pacific. [online] Bangkok, Thailand: UNICEF Regional Office for East Asia and Pacific.

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Recognizing the impact of sanitation on health, the environment, poverty reduction and economic and social development, the United Nations has declared 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation. This initiative will spotlight the seriousness of the global sanitation crisis and kick-start efforts to accelerate progress for meeting the Millennium Development Goal target of halving, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of the world’s population without sustainable access to basic sanitation.
UNICEF is working at the field level and with governments at national level to develop improved programming models and to take successful models to scale. UNICEF works with partners to use data on the cost and health implications, to advocate for policy changes and to increase resources for sanitation and hygiene programmes.

This publication presents, in a nutshell, the initiatives taken in the East Asia and Pacific region. UNICEF promotes here improved sanitation technologies that are low-cost but that satisfy criteria for safety, effectiveness and sustainability for use within community-based programmes. These high-quality, low-cost options are key to the improvement of sanitation coverage in the region. UNICEF also works on reducing the impact of excreta disposal on the environment. Projects include the development of new designs for sanitation systems in high water table zones, and EcoSan, which promotes the safe use of human excreta as fertilizer.

The complete text of the Declaration adopted by consensus of the 135 participants at the end of the First East Asia Ministerial Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene, 1 December 2007, is also presented here.

Subjects: access to sanitation | schools | children | hygiene | health education | hand washing | sdiasi | sdihyg;