World finance, development ministers meet in Washington for high-level meeting on water, sanitation

The Guardian reports that "60 finance and development ministers [will] gather in Washington on Friday at a high-level meeting on sanitation and water." According to the newspaper, "The Sanitation and Water for All meeting, convened by Anthony Lake, executive director of the U.N. children's fund UNICEF, follows an announcement in March by UNICEF and the World Health Organization that the world had met the millennium development goal (MDG) overall target for access to safe drinking water in 2010, but that 783 million people were still missing out."

The meeting, being held before the weekend's World Bank meeting, "is expected to call on world leaders to keep their promises and to support the 57 countries currently most off-track to achieve their MDG targets for sanitation," the Guardian writes, adding, "WaterAid estimates that if these countries achieve their MDG targets for sanitation by 2015, at least 400,000 additional children's lives would be saved" (Tran, 4/20). The meeting will be "moderated by Ambassdor Jan Eliasson, who has recently been named by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as the United Nations' fourth Deputy Secretary-General," a UNICEF press release states (4/19).