Delegate: Victor Schmitt
Country: India
Committee: Environmental
Topic: Access to water
People not being able to access a clean source of water has been a problem which the United Nations has been trying to fix for many years. There are about 790 million people without access to an improved water supply according to the CDC. In addition, people with no access to an improved water supply have to walk hours just to get to a water source, and even then, the water that they retrieve is often unsafe to drink and can cause many deadly diseases. There are an estimated 800,000 children that die from diarrhea every year, usually in developing countries due to unsafe water.
The United Nations has made much progress towards fixing this problem, in 1977, the United Nations stated that access to clean water was a human right. The United Nations also has been raising awareness to bring many people clean water. Recently the United Nations recognized that the access to clean water was a basic human right, which is a major accomplishment on this topic.
India plays a major role in the issue concerning access to clean water, and sanitation. In 2008, only 88 percent of the indian population had access to drinking water, leaving around 200,000,000 people without access to clean drinking water. An estimated 21 percent of communicable diseases in India are linked to unsafe water. A big issue that plays a role in this unsafe water crisis is the staggering 344,000,000 people who practice open defecation. This is a major issue that must be resolved somehow. The government of India is not doing much about this issue currently, and a lot of the issues are attributed to increased privatization and increased population growth.
- Victor Schmitt
