Human Rights and Health Equity: Water and Sanitation in Angola

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the human rights and health equity situation in Angola, specifically focusing on the critical issues surrounding access to clean water and sanitation. It highlights the challenges faced by Angolan citizens, including inadequate water supply, unequal distribution, and the impact of these issues on public health. The report examines the government's efforts, such as the Water for All Programme and the contributions of organizations like USAID, while also addressing the sanitation challenges, including inadequate toilet facilities and poor hygiene practices. It underscores the link between lack of access to clean water and sanitation and the high rates of waterborne diseases, particularly among children. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of sanitation services that are culturally sensitive and non-discriminatory, particularly for vulnerable groups. The report provides statistics on access to sanitation and water, emphasizing the need for improved infrastructure and sustainable solutions to ensure that all citizens have access to their fundamental rights to clean water and adequate sanitation services. The report emphasizes that cost of water and sanitation services must not exceed 5 per cent of the family’s earnings.

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HUMAN RIGHTS AND HEALTH EQUITY
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Human Rights and Health Equity
Introduction
Safe drinking water, as well as sufficient sanitation, is vital for lowering the level of
poverty, for sustainable development, and attaining the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs). Thus, any government that guarantees access to clean water, and sanitation as human
rights should promote strategies towards ensuring access to clean water and sanitation services is
a reality for all citizens of a specific country like Angola. The water supply and sanitation
services for all citizens should be constant and adequate for the individual, as well as domestic
use. The water needed for domestic and personal use should be safe, which means free from
germs designed to promote the health of all citizens. This is for the reason that every citizen
under the constitution is entitled to safe and adequate sanitation services. In addition, water and
sanitation facilities should be located in a place where physical security is guaranteed for all
people using them (Redvers, 2011, pp. 1). Guaranteeing safe water and sanitation also needs
considerable education on hygiene, as well as promotion for the citizens to have knowledge of
their rights regarding water and sanitation. This implies that toilets should be accessible for all
citizens to be used both during the day and night and should be hygienic; wastewater, plus
excreta should be securely disposed and toilets must be constructed to stop cases of collapse.
These practices are meant to promote the health and hygiene of the population, which is
enshrined as a human right of having good health and sanitation. In Angola, access to safe water
plus sanitation services is a huge challenge (Rosemarin & Stockholm Environment Institute,
2008, pp. 26.

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Angola is a country that faces numerous challenges concerning issues of water and
sanitation. Angola has continued to face many challenges because of the water crisis that stops
the citizens from enjoying their fundamental rights to access clean water along with sanitation
services. The government has tried to provide access to clean plus safe water, but this has not
been achieved in Angola. This has continued to undermine the right to water by the citizens. The
paper will examine the problem facing the citizens in terms of access to clean and safe water in
addition to sanitation and impact their rights.
Water and Sanitation
Access to Water
Everyone in Angola has the right to water and sanitation services, which are physically
accessible in, or immediate vicinity of the family, place of work, as well as educational or health
institutions. Comparatively, there is the need to make reforms to water and sanitation services to
ensure that women, the elderly, and children are not overlooked by the government; hence,
enhancing the dignity, health, as well as the overall quality of all citizens in Angola rather than
providing access to some few people that can afford. With 1,600 kilometres of Atlantic coastline
together with its inner traversed by Congo, Zambezi, as well as Okavango rivers, Angola
remains Africa’s nearly all water-rich nations. However, Angola faces acute supply of clean and
safe water and sanitation to its citizens. Also, accessing water by both the urban and rural areas
has been a major problem despite the continued efforts by the government to promote the supply
of clean water to its citizens. The widening inequality in terms of adequate water supply has
become a major problem among human rights activists that see this inequality as a violation to

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the right to access clean, safe, and adequate supply to all citizens in Angola (World Health
Organization & UNICEF, 2013, pp 38). In many instances, in urban centres, like Luanda and its
neighbourhoods, only four out 10 water taps are working. This makes it challenges for
individuals that need to travel to very distant places to get water, in some instances, up to 9
kilometres or 10 kilometres. These long distances where women and children should travel to get
water has affected these women and children because they will spend many hours to get water
for both domestic and personal use. The women plus kids are the most impacted by the
inaccessibility of water resources affecting their daily contribution to the development of the
nation. The women and children also face great challenges when they have to walk over the mud
to get water because of the heavy downfall that makes roads and paths impassable. In addition,
the heavy rains experienced during the rainy season have seen to come with the waterborne
diseases that are most experienced in water sources like boreholes and wells where they affect
the right to access clean and safe water (Bassett & Winter-Nelson, 2010, pp. 89).
Furthermore, the country prides itself as the most rain in Southern Africa plus has two
times as much as accessible water per capita like in the case of Mozambique or Zambia where it
is approximated to be10 times more as compared than South Africa based on statistics released
by the United Nations. Hitherto, based on state’s statistics only around 42 per cent of Angola’s
more than 17 million people have access to safe water plus just fewer than 60 per cent to suitable
sanitation. This implies that the right access to clean in addition to safe water has been breached
for the majority of the people of Angola. Additionally, in some regions of Luanda, the majority
as 10,000 individuals may share one water tap that makes it hard to access water because they

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have to queue so that they get the water that shows unequal distribution and access to water in
Angola (World Health Organization & UNICEF, 2013, pp 39).
The supply challenges and faulty machinery may make water taps stop functioning for
many days or even some weeks in a given time. The huge quantities of inadequately designed,
post-war building work undertaken by the rival firms may result in new pipes being laid in a
single day then disconnected the following day, then followed by prolonged conflict of who
liable along with would undertake the repairs. This will result in delays in getting adequate and
clean water for the residents; thus, creating more inequalities when it comes to accessing clean
water. Thus, the only option for the urban residents when the water taps do not work and the
adjacent waterway is excessively far away is to purchase water from private water companies
that fill up at rivers and charge amid US50c to around 80c for 25 litres, over 10 times the water
tap of 5 kwanzas. Thus, this becomes a growing challenge for households by now living below a
dollar in a nation where, relying on whose statistics in which the majority live below $2 a day
(Sheehan & Yong, 2010, pp. 61). This undermines the fundamental right of water where the
country should do more than what is doing to increase access to water resources given the many
sources of water that Angola has. Under the right to water plus sanitation, the water services
must be available, as well as affordable to all citizens, even the poorest. Thus, the cost of water,
as well as sanitation services must not exceed 5 per cent of the family’s earnings, which means
that services should affect citizens’ capability to get other essential goods along with services,
which include housing, food, health services along with education. However, this is not the case
in Angola where acquiring water as well as sanitation infringes the ability of the poorest citizens
to get water plus sanitation services (Oza, Lawn, Hogan, Mathers & Cousens, 2015, pp. 21).

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Additionally, those people who are residing in the town centre, like Luanda, any in a new
residence or one of the hardly any buildings in which the plumbing is still undamaged, enjoyed
piped water that costs only thirty-two kwanzas for every 1,000 litres. Hence, the absence of safe
water for those residing in the nation’s deprived neighbourhoods that have a general habit of
open-defecation that implies that there is a greater risk of illnesses, such as cholera, particularly
in the raining season (Zhang, 2008, pp. 34).
Sanitation and Toilets
Water must be of a satisfactory colour, odour, as well as taste for domestic or personal
consumption. Thus, all water plus sanitation facilities along with services should be culturally
suitable and sensitive to sex, lifecycle, as well as privacy needs. Sanitation must be culturally
satisfactory guaranteed in a non-discriminatory way and take the consideration of vulnerable,
plus marginalized groups. Consequently, this entails dealing with public toilet building matters,
like separate women and men toilets to guarantee privacy and dignity (Jacobsen, Webster, &
Kalanithy, 2012, pp. 9). In Angola, sanitation services are not adequate and sufficient for the
public to use because the drainage systems frequently result in puddles of sluggish water, which,
in turn, release unpleasant stink, as well as make perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes
spreading malaria. In Angola, diarrhoea causes deaths of over 20,000 kids annually, which is
ranked the 3rd biggest cause of death after malaria along with acute respiratory diseases. This has
been linked to unclean water that undermines the right to proper sanitation. Therefore, Angola’s
absence of clean water along with deprived hygiene is the primary rationale it has amongst the
greatest below five death rates globally and is a primary cause for the latest reappearance of
polio that spread into Congo (James, 2011, pp. 52).

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In order to address the sanitation challenges, in 2007, Angola’s government of Angola
established the Water for All Programme that is responsible for building along with
rehabilitating water supply systems, as well as community access taps. And whilst there are
challenges when it comes to sanitation, the program operated in collaboration with United
Nations Children’s Fund and other outside organizations has started to make a difference.
Though Angola has invested millions of money in water in addition to sanitation infrastructure in
the latest decades, sustainable access to improved water along with the sanitation facilities
remains a big challenge (Bartram & Cairncross, 2010, pp. e1000367). These programs are
designed to provide an adequate supply of water and sanitation services as one approach to
promote the right to access clean and adequate to all citizens of Angola. This has been boosted
by the work and contribution of USAID that has continued to ensure that citizens in Angola get
clean and sufficient water and sanitation services. USAID is shifting its strategy in the water
segment from its long-term focus on the hardware through launching water systems to promote
access to clean and safe water in the country. This is done through making sure that state officers
from the nationwide, municipal, as well as community levels, are trained, as well as mentored to
ensure that they adequately plan along with implementing the relevant municipal and national
water besides sanitation programs. USAID offers access to sufficient amount of potable water in
addition to enhanced sanitation services at a satisfactory cost besides a sustainable basis. This
has also resulted in the decline of waterborne illnesses in provinces of Benguela, Luanda, Uige,
and Bengo. This goal has been designed to promote equality in access to water and sanitation in
Angola promoting rights to access to clean adequate water and sanitation (Girod, 2015, pp. 57).

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In Angola, according to the 2014 Census, only six out of 10 households utilize proper
place to defecate-and it is only 26 per cent in rural regions against 82 per cent in urban regions.
The lack of access to water and poverty make it harder for communities to promote basic
sanitation and access toilets. Conditions are not much better for children in school where these
children face very difficult situation challenges because of poor access to toilets that affect their
health because of defecations that may affect their health. On average, 58% of learners have
access to toilets, where 28% of these learners use latrines and 45% defecate in bushes or open
places according to UNICEF research entitled “WASH in Schools in Angola. The study focused
on 600 educational institutions in six provinces in Angola (Bain, Cronk , Wright, Yang,
Slaymaker, & Bartram, 2014, pp. e1001644).
The lack of proper toilets and latrines has been linked to many diseases (diarrhoea and
cholera) that affect the health of the affected citizens denying the citizens their right to proper
sanitation and toilets. According to the Ministry of Health of Angola, diarrhoea diseases account
for around 18% of under-five mortalities and are very widespread amongst school-age kids in
Angola. Hence, inadequate hygiene because of lack of toilets is among the rationales for infant
mortalities, faecal-oral transmission illnesses, malnutrition, as well as stunting amongst children
in Angola (Redvers, 2011, pp. 1).
Conclusions
Safe access to water along with adequate sanitation is essential to a healthy, as well as
decorous life. Thus, the gains of water plus hygiene comprise diarrhoeal illnesses prevented,
other diseases stopped, improved nutrition, monetary, plus economic savings. In Angola, the

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right to access to water plus sanitation services including toilets have improved significantly
because of the governments and other bodies, such as UNICEF, WHO and USAID
(Cumming,Tom & Slaymaker, 2018, pp. 69). There different programs that have been designed
to improve the right to access to water in addition to sanitation that has shown remarkable
improvements in Angola. However, despite these programs, there is the need to develop other
strategies to eliminate this problem of the right to access clean and safe water and sanitation
services. There is the need to develop more educational programs that will target the public on
the importance of promoting hygiene and using water in the right manner. More so, schools
should introduce hand washing programs where children are taught to wash their hands after
visiting the toilets. This will improve the current scenario where many children suffer many
diseases and deaths because of unhygienic practices. Finally, the government should introduce
more programmes geared towards increasing access to clean water plus sanitation.

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