“Investing in sanitation is about giving people health, dignity and development,” said the Dutch crown prince Willem-Alexander today in a speech at the UN-Water Seminar in Stockholm, Sweden.

“It leads to lower child mortality, better maternal health, fewer deaths from waterborne diseases, fewer girls dropping out of school and more women playing an active role in their communities. I repeat today what I have been saying for the past several months: every dollar spent on sanitation is a dollar spent on at least five other Millennium Development Goals,” the Prince of Orange said.

The seminar was held to prepare a final action plan for the International Year of Sanitation (IYS) next year, designed to accelerate progress on sanitation to help save lives and foster economic and social development.

Prince Willem-Alexander is an honorary member of the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century and patron of the Global Water Partnership, a body established by the World Bank, the UN, and the Swedish Ministry of Development. He was appointed as the Chairperson of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation on December 12th, 2006.

“By every statistical measure, we are far from where we ought to be to have a realistic hope of meeting the MDG target on sanitation – to halve the proportion of people lacking even basic sanitation services by 2015. Yet, I believe that if we are focused, committed, and smart about shaping the IYS agenda to create the right context for action, that target we have set for ourselves is within reach,” the crown prince said.