Yet many millions of people around the world face water shortages and a daily struggle to secure safe water for their basic needs. Millions of children continue to die every year from preventable water-borne diseases. Water-related natural disasters such as floods, tropicalstorms and tsunamis exact a heavy toll in human life and suffering. And all too regularly, drought afflicts some of theworld’s poorest countries, exacerbating hunger and malnutrition. In the past decade, significant progress has been made in providing people with access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation. But a major effort is still required in the decade ahead to extend these essential services to those still unserved,the vast majority of whom are poor people. Meeting the water and sanitation targets set by the international community for 2015 is a crucial step towards the ultimategoal of providing safe drinking water and adequate sanitation to all. Providing access to water and sanitation is also fun-damental for achieving the other Millennium Development Goals, such as alleviating poverty, hunger and malnutrition;reducing child mortality; increasing gender equality; providing more opportunity for education; and ensuring environ-mental sustainability. Women and girls are overwhelmingly the water haulers of the world, a task that consumes valuable time and energy that girls could otherwise devote to schooling.