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Tom Baker: Time to kick up a stink
Time to kick up a stink
Tom Baker
To mark World Water Day a giant toilet queue formed in Westminster, to highlight the fact that 2.6 billion people don’t have access to a decent toilet.
The queue formed outside the Houses of Parliament and made an impressive sight as politicians, journalists and officials made their way into work.
The campaigners from the End Water Poverty coalition were the London leg of the ‘World’s Longest Toilet Queue’. They were amongst some tens of thousands of campaigners in 70 countries around the world have been helping to set the World Record for the longest queue.
Everyone was united with one message. That we need our politicians to act to end the scandal that means 2.6 billion people don’t have access to a decent toilet. Too often this issue has been overlooked, but we believe they need to be prepared to talk about taps and toilets, or risk undermining achievements on other Millennium Development Goals.
Why? Because progress on sanitation is off-track, and we know that:
4000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable illnesses such as diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera and dysentery.
Over half of hospital beds in developing countries are taken by those suffering with diarrhoeal illnesses, heavily overburdening fragile health systems.
The UN estimates that half of girls who stop attending primary school in Africa do so because of the lack of safe and private toilets.
Holding the event in Westminster was an appropriate setting when you consider that 150 years ago, it was in the same building that MPs had decided they needed to do something about the ‘Great Stink’ that was engulfing London, caused by the River Thames being full of human waste because the capital didn’t have any a proper sanitation system.
Then they acted, and in the following years a sewerage system was built, and the city saw a rapid decline in number of people dying from illnesses associated with poor sanitation. So much so, that the British Medical Association voted it the most important public health intervention ever.
It is high time politicians used their influence to deliver water and sanitation for the world’s poor, just as they did for them selves all those years ago.
Tom Baker is Campaigns Officer for Tearfund
Glen Tarman: Time to vote global
‘UK General Election 2010: Vote global to end world poverty, inequality and stop climate chaos’
Glen Tarman
We all know governments of rich nations in the West have an extraordinary influence on the international stage. Their decisions affect the lives of billions across the planet. Yet, when a national election is called, this fact is often conveniently forgotten. The political focus switches to the domestic agenda. Education, health, the economy in Britain – all get heavily debated. World povertyand inequality, the negative affects of globalisation and other crucial global issues can become sidelined as the political and media establishment promote their view of the limits of citizen concern.
That changed at the last UK election in 2005. The massive Make Poverty History mobilisation demonstrated the degree to which the British public want UK governments and elected politicians to take urgent action on world poverty issues. That push made an important contribution to ensuring all the major political parties are now committed to increasing the UK aid budget in line with United Nations targets agreed forty years ago.
The 2010 General Election sees major campaigns to ensure development issues are once again on the election agenda. The Vote Global international development manifesto, based on ending poverty, stopping climate chaos and realising human rights worldwide, is the platform civil society organisations working on global issues are using to shift the political horizon beyond the borders of the UK.
Development and environment groups are calling on the public to ensure that their local candidates and their parties have a true commitment to global justice: ; those without an adequate progressive policy on development and climate change will not have political credibility.
It is 10 years since the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were set and in 2010 the progress made to date will be reviewed. It is widely acknowledged that the international community is perilously off course to meet the targets. The Vote Global manifesto sets out key political commitments necessary for Britain to play its full part in rising to these challenges to ensure the world meets – and exceeds – the MDGs.
The support of the British public for Make Poverty History is just one example of just how much citizens care about poverty in developing countries. The 35, 000-strong Put People First demonstration ahead of the G20 London Summit in April 2009 is another more recent example of how the public want those in power to act for the global good – something we saw again ahead of the UN climate summit in December when tens of thousands of people marched against climate change.
Politicians, particularly in the UK but across the West, should take heed of the fact that membership of political parties is falling whilst active membership of special interest and campaigning groups is rising. Political parties need to make sure they are listening and representing people’s wider political interests. They should consider that the 150 organisations backing the Vote Global manifesto have a supporter base millions more than the membership of the UK political parties.
Of course, domestic issues are of primary importance to most people in an election, but now more than any time in human history the political choices of voters affect others across the globalised world. Votes are, in effect, local, national and international. This is why NGOs are working together with others to ensure political parties and candidates truly commit to progressive action on world poverty and climate change so that the UK does all it can to bring about a world in which poverty is eradicated and people’s rights are realised.
Glen Tarman is Advocacy Manager for Bond – the UK membership organisation for NGOs working in international development
