Mr. Eliasson opened his remarks by urging all in attendance to join in addressing the concern of the members of the U.N. General Assembly for the Millennium Development Goals. The full range of these goals is affected by water concerns. He commented that there is hardly any group he would rather spend time with than teachers in discussing such issues. Theirs is the responsibility to pass on the baton to the next generation.
He then raised his speaker’s glass of water beside him on the podium and pointed out that this glass of water would be a luxury to 1.2 billion people in the world. Furthermore, he commented, it is usually the women and children who walk miles out and back for whatever water is available, at great social cost. In addition, 2.6 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. In so many parts of the world there are no sanitation facilities at schools. If women and girls did not have to gather water, they could be in school. And if girls had private toilet facilities they would be more likely to remain in schools as they reach adolescence. “Ultimately, what do all the different ‘landscape of goals’ of the United Nations—security, development, human rights, free press—mean if you can’t read? In the clean water zones you can go so much further!”
Mr. Eliasson called for governments and the private sector to mobilize to relieve water-related conditions alongside the campaign against AIDS. Presently every three seconds a child dies of illness related to poor water and poor sanitation. Mr. Eliasson said that he personally “has seen the rise of a slow, constant, quiet death that we are getting used to.” Poor people almost always rank clean water as their top priority. And this could be so easily fixed. It should be done with a “crash program.”
The international remedy is to hold governments and the United Nations to account: to give water-related concerns the priority they deserve. As president of the General Assembly, Mr. Eliasson emphasized that the members have never been more convinced of the necessity of global solutions to global problems. Nations cannot afford to be isolated: “Never has it been clearer that we need good multi-nationalism” to address the world problems of disease, migration, AIDS, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Eliasson urged the conference teachers to “find your issues within this issue: the child who doesn’t get water in Africa affects us all, our security and the world’s. . . .The role of teachers is to raise that glass of water. We need to pass these ideas on to the next generation.” He closed by saying “If I were not a diplomat, I think I would have been a teacher.”
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