The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), agreed in 2000, aimed to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation between 1990 and 2015.

A total of 748 million people still do not have access to even an improved drinking water source (Progress on drinking water and sanitation 2014 update. JMP, 2014) and existing indicators do not address the safety and reliability of water supplies.

In July 2010, the General Assembly adopted a resolution, which “recognized the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights” (GA RES 64/292). To reach the requirements of the right of access to safe drinking water requires real improvements for several millions of people.

The MDG target for sanitation is an even more pressing challenge, with 2.5 billion people currently lacking access to improved sanitation and over one billion still practising open defecation. At current rates of progress, the sanitation target will be missed by over half a billion people.

Furthermore, these global aggregates mask large disparities between nations and regions, rich and poor, between rural and urban populations, as well as between disadvantaged groups and the general population.

There is currently no global target to improve hygiene, despite this being one of the single most cost-effective public health interventions (A Post-2015 Global Goal for Water: Synthesis of Key Findings and Recommendations from UN-Water. UN-Water, 2014)