LATIN AMERICA:
WATER: Listening to the Voices of Children
Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY,  (IPS) - An average of 4,500 children under the age of five die every day worldwide from lack of access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation. To talk about this appalling situation, 100 children and teenagers from 30 countries have come to Mexico to share their experiences and take part in the search for solutions.

The Children's World Water Forum kicked off Thursday in the Mexican capital. The young participants, who are involved in water and hygiene projects in their schools and communities, will debate water topics and have the chance to express their points of view to several government ministers.

"They will listen to us, because children are most heavily affected by the water crisis, and if we don't do something now, the future will be difficult, because coming generations will not have enough water," Anyeli González, a 16-year-old from Colombia who is involved in a water conservation and environment project in her high school, told IPS.

González and other youngsters active in water-related initiatives in Latin America, Asia and Africa were invited to Mexico by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the U.S.-based non-governmental Water Education for Teachers (Project WET) and the Japan Water Forum (JWF).

The Children's World Water Forum is being held parallel to the Fourth World Water Forum, which opened Thursday in Mexico City with the participation of more than 13,000 representatives of governments, non-governmental organisations, business, and the United Nations.

Both the Fourth World Water Forum itself and the children's conference will run through next Wednesday.

UNICEF notes that "children are the most vulnerable and the hardest-hit" by the lack of safe water and basic sanitation, problems that affect more than 400 million children around the world, and that have devastating effects on all aspects of a child's life, from education and physical growth to survival itself.

"Diarrhea contracted from contaminated water is the world's second biggest killer of children under the age of five; over one million die from it every year," says UNICEF, which puts the total annual number of cases of diarrhea among children at four billion.

As in the case of other health-related issues, the poor are most severely impacted by the lack of clean water. A child born in the United States or Europe is 520 times less likely to die of diarrheal diseases than a child born in sub-Saharan Africa, where a mere 36 percent of the population has access to sanitation, the U.N. agency reports.

There are over 220 million children in the world infected with intestinal parasites, which prevent them from growing normally and attending school regularly. Ultimately, these problems represent an obstacle to overcoming poverty.

Women and children in the world's poorest countries walk an average of six kilometres a day to carry 20 litres of water to their homes. The time they must devote to this task cuts into the time that could otherwise be spent on other productive activities or education.

"There is a lot that we children can do to help solve the water crisis. We can improve things simply by learning to wash our hands, which would keep a lot of us from getting sick, but also by helping our friends and neighbours to make better use of the water we have," said González.

The Colombian teenager participates in a programme on water and the environment in which students from different schools organise performances featuring puppets and music to raise awareness on the issue in their communities. She is in Mexico to share her experiences with other youngsters from around the world.

One of them is 15-year-old Dolly Akhter, who lives in a slum neighbourhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh and is a member of a group that educates local residents about better hygienic practices and the use of latrines.

Another is 13-year-old Charlotte Akoth from Nairobi, Kenya, who is responsible for teaching the 2,000 students at her school about hygiene and the proper use of the school's 18 toilets.

For his part, 13-year-old Suresh Baral from the village of Pumbi Bhumbi in Nepal is the president of his school's sanitation club, which organises fund-raising activities to finance programmes to promote better hygiene and provide small credits for the building of latrines.

"Just the fact that we are here in Mexico at the Forum represents an obligation for us. When we go home we will work with even greater commitment and teach adults the importance of taking care of water," commented González.

UNICEF reported that the youngsters attending the World Water Forum will be meeting with a number of the government ministers participating in the event in order to study ways in which children can contribute to solving the world's water crisis.

"This is one of the most important activities in the children's forum, because several of the ministers coming to the World Forum are going to listen to them and speak with them," Donna Goodman, a UNICEF water and sanitation expert, remarked to IPS.

Although there is enough water in the world for everyone, there are 1.1 billion people deprived of access to this basic resource, while 2.6 billion do not have access to even the most rudimentary latrines.

The 4th World Water Forum in Mexico follows others held in Morocco in 1997, the Netherlands in 2000 and Japan in 2003. Although it is not a United Nations-organised meeting and does not have the power to adopt mandatory measures, it is considered the most important international event on this issue.