Issue 10: July-August 2001

More than 100 national government and international officials, representatives of NGOs and experts attended a conference on the Bangladesh arsenic crisis in Dhaka July 3 co-hosted by United Nations University and the NGO Earth Identity Project.

The meeting issued a communique calling for the issue to be placed on the U.N. agenda when that body convenes in September. Earlier, Humayun Rashid Choudhury, Speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament and past-President of the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA), had called for a Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly “to discuss the threat of arsenic poisoning in the drinking water of millions of people in the world.” (Mr. Choudhury died suddenly a few days after the conference.)

The declaration emphasized the urgency of a coordinated national and international response to prevent the potential arsenic poisoning deaths and sickness of hundreds of thousands of people caused by contaminated well water, primarily in Bangladesh but also in other parts of the world. 

At least 28 million and as many as 57 million people – more than the number worldwide infected with the HIV virus – are drawing well water throughout Bangladesh and in West Bengal, India contaminated with unsafe levels of arsenic.  Click here for more information on the arsenic crisis, including the full conference declaration.