Sanitation and Water for All - Building Forward Better for Recovery and Resilience

Video message by Michelle Bachelet
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Excellencies,
Dear colleagues,

Thank you to the Sanitation and Water for All global partnership and UNICEF for convening this event, and to the Government of Indonesia for hosting. I am pleased to address you today.

Water and sanitation are basic human rights. They are fundamental to human dignity. And they are indivisible from all other human rights.

The COVID-19 pandemic starkly demonstrated that the existing inequalities in access to water and sanitation easily aggravate the risk of infection and death from disease.

As we “build forward better” from the pandemic, we need to tackle the root causes of widespread inequalities and discrimination. It is exactly these pervasive inequalities that have made some people more vulnerable both to the disease and to the economic and social consequences of the pandemic response.

Unless we urgently address these inequalities, water will not be a source of life, but one of conflict.

Global estimates suggest that just over a decade from now, 700 million people could be displaced by water scarcity, in a growing crisis fueled by climate change, population growth and increased competition for scant resources.

We need to address the systemic weakness and underinvestment in the water and sanitation sector as well as in education, health and other relevant areas.

And above all, we must invest in people themselves, valuing their contributions and empowering them to claim their rights and actively participate in their own sustainable development.

With just eight years to go to the 2030 deadline, we are seriously off-track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 6 which aims to ensure clean water and sanitation for all – and the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing us even further back from those goals.

The latest analysis from the UN shows that Governments must quadruple their current rates of progress in order to get SDG 6 on track.

As Ministers of water, sanitation, and hygiene, as Ministers of health, climate, environment, and economy, or as professionals in all of these sectors, you bring crucial combined knowledge and expertise to this discussion. We can only deliver SDG 6, and the human rights to water and sanitation, through our collective efforts.

Together, we must develop integrated solutions for safe water and sanitation for all, always and everywhere. These solutions will be the gateways to our health and well-being, to peaceful and resilient societies and to sustainable development.

I wish you successful deliberations.

Thank you.