Topic: Ensuring Access to Potable Water
Country: Guatemala
Delegate Name: Colleen Janes
School: East Grand Rapids High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Guatemala position papers GLIMUN 2016 committees
Guatemala is the most populous nation in Latin America, but with over 50% our population living under the poverty line, malnutrition and food and water insecurity prevail as prominent issues in our culture. As of 2004, 90% of the Guatemalan population had access to drinking water, but the system only functioned on average 12 hours per day and only 25% of the water had been disinfected. Guatemala acknowledges that strides need to be made to improve the sanitation and reliability of our drinking water, but is proud of the progress we have made to implement a nationwide water system in the recent years.
Guatemala largely relies on foreign entities for funding our water system. After a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank in 2002, Guatemala was able to further our hydraulic infrastructure, especially in rural areas. In the future we haves hopes to further our efforts to provide sanitized, reliable water to our citizens, but there is a severe lack of domestic funding for any kind of future project.
Guatemala urges the World Health Organization to create a plan to send aid to nations like our own, where hydraulic infrastructure is lacking. A lack of funding has caused all future plans to improve water quality to cease, and has left our citizens with subpar and hardly potable drinking water. Poorly sanitized water leads to outbreaks of disease, so Guatemala calls upon all nations to band together and create a plan to guarantee clean, reliable drinking water to all people.
