How £11bn pledged for water sanitation aid never arrived

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/how-11bn-pledged-for-water-sanitation-aid-never-arrived-8060071.html



Almost £11bn of life-saving aid has gone "missing" over the past decade – a sum that could have provided around 100 million of the world's poorest people with access to clean water and basic sanitation.

World aid donors pledged to spend £34bn of water and sanitation aid between 2002 and 2010 but only released £23bn of it, according to a new report by WaterAid and Development Initiatives, Addressing the Shortfall, to be published next week. More than two and a half billion people do not have access to safe sanitation – around a third of the world's population – and almost 800 million go without access to clean drinking water.

The accumulated shortfall of £11bn could have provided clean water to one in seven of those most in need. The report's analysis of Organisation of Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) figures shows that, on average, 30 per cent of water and sanitation aid, per year, was never released, or was not accounted for. More than a quarter of UK aid, or £192m, was not disbursed.

Sanjay Wijesekera, a former advisor to the Department for International Development (Dfid) and now chief of Unicef's water and sanitation programme in New York, said he was "staggered" by the "scale of the problem uncovered by the report. Particularly, when one considers the cost in terms of the numbers of children who die every day due to inadequate water, sanitation and poor hygiene."