The 2nd South Asian Conference on Sanitation (Sacosan) will be held at Islamabad, on 21-23 November 2005. According to a source of Ministry of Environment, the overall goal of the Conference is to accelerate the progress of sanitation and hygiene work in the South Asia so as to enhance its peoples' quality of life in fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals and the commitments made in the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
South Asian Conference will review progress made in implementation of the Dhaka Declaration of the 1st South Asian Conference on Sanitation.
This conference would also review the progress of facilitation development of country-specific as well as regional frameworks for sanitation to share experiences and lessons learnt in sanitation and hygiene promotion.
According to source, one of the key outcomes of the conference was the Dhaka Declaration whereby the participating countries committed to "Organise a Sacosan meeting to be held every two years (the hosting country will be the co-ordinating point for Inter-Country Working Group for the period leading up to the next biannual event) with ministers, heads of agencies, development partners and other actors with the potential to introduce and sustain a viable regional Cupertino for sanitation, with the first of these events hosted by Pakistan in 2005, and the second hosted by India in 2007".
To meet the Government of Pakistan's obligation under the Dhaka Declaration, the Ministry of Environment will organise the 2nd South Asian Conference on Sanitation (Sacosan-2005) on 21-23 November 2005.
The conference is being organised by the Ministry of Environment, Government of Pakistan, with the support and Cupertino of the following organisations: ActionAid Pakistan, DFID, International Water Association, Mercy Corps Pakistan, Plan Pakistan, UNDP, Unicef, WaterAid, Water and Sanitation Programme-South Asia, WHO/Ministry of Health.