Ethiopia to host ministerial meeting on sanitation, water

Ethiopia will be hosting a high-level meeting of ministers responsible for sanitation and water from March 15-16 in the country's capital.

The meeting is expected to deliberate on actions to be taken to develop achievable sustainable development goals (SDGs) strategies.

It will dwell upon ways of strengthening national institutions and collaboration on national programs as well as discuss issues related to available resources for countries on planning and implementing their strategies.

Motuma Mukassa, Ethiopian Minister of Water, Irrigation, and Electricity, told reporters on Wednesday that the meeting would be the first on the topic after the UN member states agreed on the SDGs, and that it would be an opportunity to prepare for the implementation of the SDG targets related to water, sanitation and hygiene.

"The meeting is a unique opportunity for countries to prepare for the implementation of the SDG targets related water, sanitation, and hygiene," he noted.

The meeting is organized by the Sanitation and Water for All partnership (SWA) in collaboration with the UN Child fund (UNICEF) and Ethiopian government.

SWA has over 100 partners, mostly governments, and works as a platform for encouraging and coordinating political dialogue and action around water, sanitation and hygiene issues.

According to SWA, its meeting in 2014 attracted 21 ministers of finance and 35 ministers responsible for water and sanitation, who deliberated on ways of addressing issues such as lack of funding, poor allocation of funding, human capacity building, shortfalls in monitoring and use of data for informed decision making, among others. Endit