Geneva - 5/09/2006

The report, Meeting the MDG drinking-water and sanitation target: the urban and rural challenge of the decade, tracks the effectiveness of efforts made this far to reach the target, and highlights the magnitude of the problem, the major gaps yet to be achieved up to 2015, and, country by country, those parts of the world which are on target, and those which still have a lot of ground to make up. The "Joint Monitoring Programme" report - the UN System's vehicle for tracking progress towards the water and sanitation MDGs - will clearly point at how coverage is evolving differentially in urban and rural areas, and assesses the potential effects on coverage of the rapid urbanization now taking place in developing countries