WASHPAP India
Join us for this youth advocacy initiative, brought to you by MUN Impact, One Shared.World, and the India Sanitation Coalition, working together to guarantee clean water, basic sanitation and hygiene, and essential pandemic protection for everyone on earth by 2030 as a cornerstone of our global response to Covid-19.
For decades, people and organizations around the world have advocated for the WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) agenda as a way to help vulnerable people. Others have advocated to strengthen public health systems and pandemic preparedness (PAP). Covid-19 has shown us that WASH and PAP are fully connected. As we are now seeing in sharp relief, a virus that grows and mutates anywhere poses an increased threat to people everywhere. Ensuring WASHPAP for all is not charity, but collective insurance.
The #WASHPAP2030 youth initiative began in March of 2021 with a series of Model United Nations debates with students from around the world. The debates produced a series of UN resolutions that have been consolidated and revised, by leading experts and youth from the debates, into one comprehensive UN Resolution that is being introduced to government officials, UN organizations, and NGOs around the world. Language from this Resolution – drafted by students – is currently being negotiated by members of the German and Spanish foriegn ministries and a global advocacy campaign will begin in September with hopes of encouraging more nations to adopt its recommendations.
Before we continue to take this initiative forward, we realized that we need the input of additional young people who have seen the effects of lack of sanitation and pandemic protection in their countries. We have teamed up with the India Sanitation Coalition to create a program specifically for Indian youth to provide their own recommendations for world leaders on how to increase access to WASHPAP, based on their own experiences and those of people in their local communities.
Four Questions to be Addressed During Consultations
Q.1 What is your assessment of India’s preparedness to meet the targets of Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) by 2025 where source sustainability becomes a limiting factor throwing challenges of enormous proportion? (Bangalore)
Q.2 A community which is labeled as open defecation free when it reports zero contamination of the surface soil and surface water with human faeces. India declared itself open defecation free in 2019. What do you think the country must engage in, now, post the achievement, broadly, to sustain its open defecation free status? (Lucknow)
Q.3 Do you think that India has already evolved so much as to be able to take care of its public toilet settings to prevent the same from being a seat of Covid infection in the current time? (Mumbai)
Q.4 How far do you think India has come to promote these behaviours around hygiene? Have the current swachhta initiatives of the government given hygiene its due given the criticality of these behaviours? If yes, what are the success stories around them and if not, what needs to be done to reinforce these behaviours to secure PAP for its citizens? (New Delhi)
SCHEDULE
- Bangalore August 21st at 7:30 pm IST
PARTICIPATION
Participants will discuss the aforementioned questions, as well as provide feedback and ideas, from the perspective of young people in India, for the WASHPAP UN Resolution that will be released to the public in September.
Additionally, participants in each Consultation will engage directly with an esteemed specialist in the field.
This is the first ever opportunity for young people to make concrete contributions to a real UN resolution and share their lived experiences in an international forum.
If you are interested in registering for the #WASHPAP2030 India Consultations please register below.
RESOURCES
BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Click here.
Story Map: Click here.
Participation is free and open to any Indian youth in high school or university.
We also welcome you to participate in the Share the Water Challenge! Visit this webpage for more detailed instructions on creating your own Share the Water video.