| Issue 33. 25 April 2014 | www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/decade_weekly.shtml |
| This week in focus | Editor’s note
Welcome to the Decade’s Weekly! Every week it brings you the latest news from the International Decade for Action ’Water for Life’ 2005-2015. Please feel free to forward this newsletter. You can also access this newsletter online. Quoting BKM
"Preventing and treating malaria ensures that more children are well enough to stay in school, learn skills and grow into productive members of society. This spares human suffering, increases household income and contributes to economic development."
Tip of the week
UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, on his message for World Malaria Day 2014.
Available to download!
The final report from the Journalist Workshop 2014 set amidst the World Water Day celebrations 20-21 March, in Tokyo Japan, is now online. >> Access the final report 
For more information on the media training programme, visit the UN-Water Programme on Advocacy and Communication (UNW-DPAC) Media Programme page. |
| #WorldMalariaDay On World Malaria Day: Invest in the future, defeat malaria!
Date: 25 April 2014 World Malaria Day is an opportunity to celebrate the fact that the world is on track to meet the global Millennium Development Goal target of reversing the incidence of malaria. Over the last decade, the World has made major progress in the fight against malaria. Since 2000, malaria mortality rates have fallen by 42% and 50 of the 99 countries with ongoing transmission are now on track to meet the 2015 World Health Assembly target of reducing incidence rates by more than 75%. However, we're not there yet. Malaria still kills an estimated 627,000 people worldwide, mainly children under five years of age in sub-Saharan Africa. Emerging drug and insecticide resistance threaten to reverse these gains. If the World is to accelerate progress against malaria in line with Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 6, more efforts are urgently required. World Malaria Day provides an opportunity for advocacy, an occasion to highlight the need for continued investment and sustained political commitment for malaria prevention and control. It is an opportunity for affected regions to learn from each other's experiences, donors to join the global partnership, researchers and academic institutions to share their advances and international partners, companies and foundations to demonstrate their efforts and reflect on future intervention.
>> World Malaria Day 2014 page |
| In the news | Forthcoming events |
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#Water&Health
The Madrid Initiative: A global strategy to provide access to safe water and sanitation in health centres
As a result of the international meeting on tools for improving drinking water quality, organized by the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality of Spain from 21 to 23 April in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication (UNW-DPAC), the WHO has proposed this 23 April the "Madrid Initiative", a global strategy to provide access to safe water and sanitation in health centres in order to reduce maternal mortality. The initiative has been announced by Maria Neira, director general of health and the environment of the World Health Organization (WHO).
An action plan presented at a UN meeting which took place on 16-17 April in New Delhi, India, has been adopted in order to reduce disaster risks and build resilience in South and South-west Asia by managing information more efficiently. The plan will enhance the capacity of governments in the region to be better prepared and more resilient through improved infrastructure. Disaster risk in South and South-West Asia is not only seriously high but also compounded by seismic and hydro-meteorological hazards such as earthquakes, floods and cyclones, drought and tsunamis. The action plan was adopted at this Expert Group Meeting jointly organized by the ICT and Disaster Risk reduction Division of UNESCAP and the ESCAP South and South-West Asia office.
The High Level Meeting of Sanitation and Water for All, which took place on 11 April 2014 and included participation from the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, President of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim and Executive Director of UNICEF Anthony Lake, concluded with over 40 SWA partner countries making more than 250 specific commitments aimed at increasing the quantity and improving the use of financial resources, reducing inequality in access, building capacity of institutions charged with delivering water and sanitation services and coordinating resources more effectively, both from governments and donor aid.
On 9 April 2014 the United Nations launched an initiative aimed at promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency worldwide to the business community of the Decade of Sustainable Energy for All (2014 - 2024), with a forum to take place annually, starting this coming June. The initiative has three main objectives: ensuring universal access to modern energy services, doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency and sharing renewable energy globally. Currently, one out of five people lives without access to electricity. Nearly 40 per cent of the world's population rely on wood, coal, charcoal or animal waste to cook food, leading to nearly two million deaths a year - mostly women and children - from lung disease caused by toxic smoke in their homes. The initiative stresses that finding ways to address this energy poverty while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions and tackling climate change is a crucial global challenge. |
#WaterGovernance
3rd Meeting of the OECD Water Governance Initiative
Date: 28-29 April 2014
This meeting, which counts with the participation of different UN agencies and programmes, will offer an opportunity to discuss recent developments in the global water agenda; discuss the scope, rationale and building blocks of OECD principles on water governance; discuss ways forward to build water governance indicators to support the effectiveness and performance of institutions and governance arrangements; draw lessons from regional initiatives in support of better water governance, in particular in Middle East and North Africa; and share experience on current and forthcoming water governance reforms, events and projects.
Date: 28-30 April 2014 During this workshop participants will identify trends in women's unpaid labour in the water sector, identify linkages between gender, informal employment and environmental impact in water supply and share experiences from their varied professional contexts. It aims to produce a concise outline of the issues faced in the given scenarios and approach a set of leading questions concerning water needs, summarizing with possible policy options and promising projects or policy initiatives for the future. The workshop will involve a broad range of stakeholders including national governments at central and local level, representatives from water provision agencies, representatives from employers and workers agencies, gender, water and informality experts, UN Women and UN-Water staff, ILO employment specialists and other NGOs active in the water sector. #WaterIntegrity 1st African Water Integrity Summit: Accelerating towards a Water Secure World
Date: 29-30 April 2014 This event will mark the conclusion of a three year regional integrity training programme in Sub-Saharan Africa, the impact of which will be summarized in order to extract practical insight into how to respond to misconduct in the water sector. The summit intends to strengthen local African relationships in the water community and at political levels in taking action against corruption. It brings together water sector stakeholders from all over Africa to exchange knowledge and experiences in facing the challenges of implementing water integrity action plans. The main themes of the Summit are the demonstration of social accountability tools, developing infrastructure and integrity and building water capacities, all output will be summarized with a final Summit declaration. You can follow the Summit on Twitter with the hashtag #waterintegritysummit |
- International Calendar
Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV) is a non-profit group in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. The RPCV has published an International Calendar for the past 28 years. The purpose of the calendar is to raise awareness of other cultures and promote peace and better understanding. Proceeds from the calendar are donated to education and development projects around the world. The 2015 featured word is WATER. The calendar will promote the Water for Life Decade by including its logo on the back cover and inside pages of the calendar.
>> Contact
- Arroyo
Arroyo is an initiative to enhance the awareness of water protection in the world especially among young people, students and children with the aid of Music for Rivers, water protection events and special projects. The objective is to demonstrate the importance of water and encourage action among the younger students and their parents at the early stages of awareness. Shreya Singh is leading this initiative from China in association with a Beijing based water protection NGO (THIRST) and local schools in China as well as Dalian American International School. This initiative has joined the "Water for Life" Decade's campaign and the logo will be included in its website under the "Our Inspirations" section.
>> Contact
- The Mother Well
Aaron Lish, Artist-in-Residence at the Shangyuan Art Museum in Beijing, China, will hold an art exhibition, opening 2 May 2014, titled "The Mother Well". An exhibition about water; it will include water self-portraits, as well as photographs of different bodies of water that explore the communication gaps in how images represent health in relation to water.
>> Contact
- Workshop "World Water Day: Water and Energy"
On the occasion of World Water Day, the Center for Public Health of Benidorm in Spain organized on 21 March 2014 a workshop targeted at the general public and stakeholders involved in water management titled "World Water Day: Water and Energy". The workshop was also an opportunity to promote World Water Day and the Water for Life Decade.
>> Contact