“The United Nations General Assembly in 1993 came up with a powerful incentive to make us all much more aware of the vital need to preserve, to protect, and far more responsibly to use our dwindling resources in fresh water, when it declared the 22nd of March of every year as World Water Day. To observe this Day is to encourage greater concern by governments, by international agencies, by the organizations of civil society, in all matters related to our planet's water.

“The central theme adopted for World Water Day in 2000 was, appropriately, “Water for the 21st Century”. UNESCO was privileged to be chosen as driving agency in organizing its celebration, whose main event was the second World Water Forum held in The Hague. We repeatedly emphasized how much clean water must be of urgent concern to us all. No sustainable development can even be imagined without universal access to healthy water, and of course the issue of water must permeate our entire regard for the ecosystem. One year ago today, on World Water Day 2000, UNESCO, with its sights now on water for human development, announced a World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP), since adopted by the entire UN system with twenty-two agencies involved. UNESCO hosts the Programme’s Secretariat, and takes a leading role.

“This year, the highly pertinent theme is “Water and Health”. It falls to the World Health Organization to lead celebrations. It is fitting indeed that human health should furnish the theme for World Water Day 2001. Health is the prerequisite for any development at all. To provide safe, clean water for drinking and sanitation is simply the fundamental condition for bettering the human lot. We are especially thinking here of the world’s regions most afflicted by poverty. We cannot stand idly back when we know that 1.2 billion people, throughout the planet’s developing countries, still enjoy no adequate access to safe sources of fresh water. Twice as many are yet denied access to proper sanitation services.