Towards achieving the millennium development goals in water supply and sanitation in Sri Lanka

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted by 189 countries at the Millennium Summit held in September 2000, in New York and embodies a political commitment to work together to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. The eight MDGs agreed for accelerating global and national level economic, social and environmental development towards eradication of poverty. Access to water supply and sanitation was considered essential and necessary pre-requisites for the above goals and so the goals of reducing by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015 were agreed with international consensus. This Paper identifies the issues and challenges to achieve the above targets by the Sri Lanka government in collaboration with multi and bilateral aid agencies, support organizations international and local NGOs, community groups and the private sector.