World Water Day: Mediterranean State of the art

Access rates to a sanitation system in the Mediterranean are higher than the world average (global rate of 59%: 80% in urban areas and 39% in the rural ones). However, in the Mediterranean about 47 million people do not have access to an adequate sanitation system. The proportion of the population with access to a sanitation system ranges from 72% in Libya to 100% in most of the northern Mediterranean countries. The percentage of the urban population with access to a sanitation system is about 100% with the exception of Egypt (86%), Morocco (88%) and the Palestinian Territories (78%).

The differences between urban and rural areas are still great (30% in Syria) and the access rate in rural
can be less than 70% in Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya (UNEP/MAP, 2007).

International Year of Sanitation (IYS) http://esa.un.org/iys/
World Water Day 2008 http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/flashindex.html
World Water Day  http://www.worldwaterday.org/