Africasan4: Ngor declaration aims to eliminate open defecation by 2030

                                                            By Babatope Babalobi

Rising from the three day 4th African Sanitation and Hygiene Conference tagged “AfricaSan4″ African leaders  have  issued the “Ngor Declaration on Sanitation and Hygiene” which aims to achieve  universal access to adequate and sustainable sanitation,  safe hygiene services and eliminate open defecation by 2030.

They also reaffirmed their commitment to the human right to water and sanitation for all for all Africans, and pledged to work towards progressively  eliminating inequalities that currently deny about 547m people in Africa access to safe sanitation.

Another major highlight of the declaration is a commitment by countries to fund sanitation and hygiene budget to a minimum of  0.5% of GDP by 2020.

The triennial AfricaSan organised by the African MinistersCouncil on Water  (AMCOW) aims to address Africa’s sanitation challenge including helping agencies and governments shape strategies for action at many levels.  Mainly attended  by sanitation technical experts, it provides a forum to to exchange lessons, to identify approaches and technologies that work best in their local circumstances.  This 4th AfricaSan water held in Dakar, Senegal, this week.

Text of the Ngor Declaration on Sanitation and Hygiene” Adopted by the African Ministers responsible for sanitation and hygiene on 27 May 2015 at AficaSan4

Preamble
We, the Ministers and Head of Delegations responsible for sanitation and hygiene in Africa, together with senior civil servants, academics, civil society, development partners and private sector at the 4th African Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene (AfricaSan), convened by the Government of Senegal with support from the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) in Dakar, Senegal, May 25-27, 2015

1. Recognizing that while an estimated 133 million people living in Africa gained improved sanitation since 1990, the level of progress has not kept pace with demograpic change; many countries do not have adequate high-level leadership, financial and human resources to implement existing policies, fail to tackle equity, do not build, manage or maintain sanitation system and services, or create the large-scale hygiene behaviour change;
2. Mindful that an estimated 61% of people living in Africa do not have access to improve sanitation and that 21% still defecate in the open;
3. Noting that this lack pf access to improved sanitation together with poor hygiene practice result in a huge burden of disease and that the associated economic, human,social,health and environmental costs are a major burden on African countries;
4. Reaffirming the human right of safe drinking water and sanitation for all;
5. Welcoming the aspiration of the draft Sustainable Development Goals which include an explicit target to “By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and an end to open defecation, paying special attention to the need of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations” committing to integrating these in national policies and plans;
6. And recognizing that the time has come to incorporate the lesson from the eThekwini commitments and replace them by the “Ngor Declaration on Sanitation and Hygiene”, setting out in particular clear indicator for monitoring progress;

The Vision articulated by African Ministers responsible for Sanitation and Hygiene at African 4, Dakar, Senegal, is summarized below:
Achieve universal access to adequate and sustainable sanitation and hygiene services and eliminate open defecation by 2030.
Commitments
To realise this vision, our governments commit to:-

1. Focus on the poorest, most marginalized and unserved aimed at progressively eliminating inequities in access and use and implement national and local strategies with emphasis on equity and sustainability;
2. Mobilise support and resources at the highest political level for sanitation and hygiene to disproportionately prioritize sanitation and hygiene in national development plans.
3. Establish and track sanitation and hygiene budget lines that consistently increase annually to reach a minimum of 0.5%GDP by 2020;
4. Ensure strong leadership and coordination at all levels to build and sustain governance for sanitation and hygiene across sectors especially water, health, nutrition, education, gender and the environment;
5. Develop and fund strategies to bridge the sanitation and hygiene human resource capacity gap at all levels;
6. Ensure inclusive, safely-managed sanitation services and function hand-washing facilities in public institutions and spaces;
7. Progressively eliminate untreated waste, encouraging its productive use;
8. Enable and engage the private sector in developing innovative sanitation and hygiene products and services especially for the marginalized and unserved;
9. Establish government-led monitoring, reporting, evaluating, learning and review systems;
10. Enable continued active engagement with AMCOW’s AfricaSan process.

We further call on:

1. All people living in Africa, especially the youth, to utilize and maintain sanitation and hygiene services with propriety and dignity;
2. AMCOW to prioritize and facilitate adequate resourcing for sanitation and hygiene by mobilising dedicated, substantive new sources of financing;
3. AMCOW to facilitate the establishment and management of systems and processes for performance monitoring and accountability against the Ngor Declaration;
4. Training institutions in Africa to strengthen local capacity to deliver appropriate services in line with demand;
   research institutions in Africa to strengthen the evidence base and develop innovative locally appropriate solutions;
5. Civil society in Africa to forge a cohesive, coherent and transparent vision and strategy to work with all stakeholders to achieve the Ngor Declaration;
6. Traditional institutions, religious leaders and faith based organisations to strongly support equitable sanitation and hygiene activities in their communities;
7. The private sector to increase its engagement in the entire sanitation and hygiene value chain to improve innovation and efficiency;
8. Development banks, donors and partners to increase their support to government led efforts for universal access to sanitation and hygiene and to match this financial support with responsible accountable engagement.

And in recognition of this we make this declaration in Ngor, Dakar on 27th May, 2015,

Abuja residents in search of water, good sanitation

 

                                                                                                  Marcus Fatunmole , Abuja, Nigeria

Iddo is one of Abuja’s (Nigeria’s Federal Capital’s) sprawling satellite communities with about 30,000 residents in January 2012. The village is predominantly occupied by non-indigenes. While the natives are virtually farmers and artisans, the non-natives mainly work in the city while others engage in both artisanal and business activities.

Residents in search

Located few metres opposite the new site of University of Abuja, the community exists without significant infrastructure. The road leading to the village is ramshackle. With erratic electricity supply, residents of the community are most hit by acute water shortage. There is no functional public borehole even as the population of the University students living in the community keeps increasing, daily.

However, a public primary school with a separately-built junior secondary school, including a single-room police station are the only facilities bearing government presence in the settlement.

In April 2012, many houses in the village fell under the wheels of bulldozers of the Department of Development Control of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The Development Control had listed some villages along the airport road for demolition. Reason: structures in the villages, the Department claimed, did not get approval from the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT) administration. Iddo was unfortunately one of such communities. It was a period of multiple torments for the community. First, stench, oozing malodorous smell from different sections of the village blended with dust that enveloped the community, as the bulldozers tore down the structures.

Priscilia Jonah is a resident of the community, which currently has about 20,000 occupants. He told our reporter that “For those of us remaining in this place, we are not happy with the way people are managing their wastes. You see people dispose of domestic waste in the already blocked drainages. Every rainfall in this village is a threat because we are so close to the river. You know anything can happen should the flood refuse to get out of environment where houses are closely built near one another. I have always been afraid of the attitudes of our people. Go to their houses, many of them don’t have toilet. They defecate in the open. They litter everywhere with wastes. If you try to correct them, it will lead to quarreling.”

Iddo is no doubt one of the city’s communities that are on the precipice of environmental hazards. Since the community witnessed the rage of the FCT administration through its demolition exercise, many of the hitherto manageable problems have been compounded. Some persons who had dug boreholes in their homes before the demolition exercise have moved out of the village; while they left with the water equipment. The relics of fallen buildings in the village have also further disfigured the settlement. Files of fallen bricks are everywhere in the village; making them easy habitat for snakes, scorpion and other harmful reptiles.

Meanwhile, as houses of non-natives were mostly affected in the flattening exercise, many of the remaining houses in the community do not have basic toilet facilities. Many people, especially children defecate in the open. More worrisome are the polythene products that litter everywhere. Some of these products, which have been buried for years, surface whenever flood or heavy wind blows of the sand upon them.  

Like many settlements in Abuja, domestic animals contribute to growing filth in the community. There are goats, dogs, fowls and other domestic pets that move around the village unchecked. They defecate wherever they see and most often, no one cares to attend to those wastes. On many occasions, the wastes disappear with the flood, blown away by wind or trodden by residents.

Another major environmental disaster in the village is lack of motorable roads. Major roads in the village are footpaths which residents have forced their vehicles through. At every rainy season, these car owners find it difficult to drive their vehicles into their homes. The vehicles are usually parked at considerably “secured” places; sometimes in the homes of friends or neighbours.

There is a major river that flows across the farthest end of Iddo village. The natives usually find respite in this water, especially during the dry season. While the children have free bath in the river, the adults fetch it for domestic use. Meanwhile, this water dries up during the dry season. Then comes a great water challenge for the villagers. Many of them dig the dry channel to scoop water into their basins; even when such water is not safe for human consumption.

 On the other, in very few houses where borehole water is available for sale, it takes resident more than a day to get the water. Many of the residents keep broken basins at the borehole site to help determine when it would be their turn. In most cases, they do not get the water until the following day.

Another dimension to water crisis in this village is that while young men, popularly called “Meruwa”, who sell water in their wheelbarrows in the nation’s capital sell as low as N20 during dry season, challenge of bad road makes the persons who sell water in Iddo community increase the price even above N50 per 20 litres. The situation is also worse with the very few persons who sell through private boreholes to the community. They increase their prices at will.