The Water Resources, Sanitation and Hygiene Fair (WARSH), held in Harare by SADC and partners, focused attention on SADC’s regional integration efforts through the management of water resources.

The SADC Directorate for Infrastructure and Services, Water Division, working together with regional NGOs, organised this southern African exhibition and trade fair on water, sanitation and hygiene.

The fair focussed on addressing poverty issues and building bridges between and among various users within the water sector and between water and other sectors.

The provision of safe water and adequate sanitation facilities remains one of the biggest challenges for the SADC region.

One of the targets of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is to halve the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation facilities by 2015, using 1990 as the baseline year.

This falls under the seventh goal, which is on environmental sustainability. The MDGs are an agenda for reducing poverty and improving lives that world leaders agreed to at the Millennium Summit in September 2000.