The fact that Keir Starmer’s government have promised to put women and girls “at the heart of everything we do” in our international work is right and proper, recognising the growing threats of violence and of essential rights undermined everywhere.
However with dramatic cuts to our international development budget already underway there will be competition for what shrunken resources remain. We need to ensure that one of the key building blocks to fulfilling that ambition to empower women and girls – access to clean water and sanitation does not suffer.
WASH services – Water, Sanitation and Hygiene – are incredibly important if we are to reduce the almost 400,000 deaths of young children every year from diseases including cholera and diarrhoea. One in four people globally still lack safe drinking water.
But that is only part of the story. The United Nations has drawn a direct line between a lack of safe water and sanitation and much wider problems including food and supply chain shortages that can spark conflicts.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on WASH I chair, backed by the wisdom of charity Water Aid, has previously highlighted in a landmark report how previous cuts to UK aid spending on WASH “put our national health security at risk” – because they raised the risks of infectious diseases and antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” spreading across the world.
It’s something that the great British public “gets” too. Significantly, 54 per cent of the British public put clean water and toilets in their top priorities for spending development aid. MPs and government should take heed.
A failure to provide clean water and sanitation makes it impossible to achieve the aim of giving women and girls more control over their lives – because it is they who disproportionately carry the burden of collecting water. That means dragging them away from school and from work and putting them in greater danger from gender-based violence.
In addition, as Evelyn Mere, the country director in Nigeria WaterAid, put it so powerfully when describing the impact of WASH cuts to MPs recently: “The number one thing is that girls are unable to stay in school because they have no decent toilets and no place to manage their menstruation in dignity and privacy. Once menstruation starts, they stay away from school. That negatively impacts their educational performance in school and begins the journey of disadvantaging them in life.”
For all these reasons, it is alarming that WASH services are likely to be targeted in the aid cuts that will strip £6.5 billion from our aid budget by 2028 – some 40 per cent of the money available.
Ministers have admitted the UK will be “moving away from the direct delivery of WASH services”, arguing developing countries can step in with our help to “strengthen” their capabilities. Closer partnerships are welcome, of course – but not if that is a cover for cuts. Alarm bells are ringing.
This government must not repeat the mistakes of previous Conservative administration who slashed WASH spending by 78 per cent at the turn of this decade – making a mockery our commitment to the UN goal of universal WASH access for all by 2030.
Consider also how, just 15 months ago, the UK and Nigeria signed a pioneering strategic partnership, naming economic growth, jobs and reducing aid dependency among its aims. All of this is undermined by failing to fund WASH services, because people must take sick days and spend money to treat diseases caused by unsafe water and lack of sanitation. That is a drag anchor on the Nigerian economy.
WaterAid has highlighted evidence that Nigeria could benefit from a $26 billion (£19bn) “sanitation economy” by 2030, where small businesses sell toilets, people find jobs building them, and young women train as plumbers – just as India provided 100 million toilets in less than a decade – if the UK invests in WASH services. It would help to deliver the very economic boost the partnership seeks.
I was proud when Labour’s former interim leader Harriet Harman was appointed as the UK’s special envoy for women and girls, to in her words “play a key role in standing up for the rights of all women and girls at a critical time”.
However, that noble promise cannot be met if the UK shrinks back from playing its part in ensuring the most basic rights of all, to water, sanitation and hygiene.
Rupa Huq is the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene and Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton
This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
