**1. Introduction**

Ensuring a quality water supply to human communities in the North and South is an ongoing process [1]. Indeed, water is essential for sustaining life and a satisfactory supply of drinking water must be made available to all consumers [2]. According to the WHO (2003) [3], 80% of illnesses and deaths among children worldwide are due to unsafe drinking water. Kosek et al. [4] note that between 1992 and 2000, 2.5 million annual deaths in children under five were due to diarrhea. The main component of this disease burden being linked to water [5].

For more than four decades, the issue of access to water in quantity and quality has never ceased to be raised worldwide. The United Nations, academic institutions, NGOs and governments have shown, through the organization of several international conferences, their interest in the global crisis caused by the mismatch between available resources and the increase in human, economic and environmental, as well as pollution due to human actions and global changes. Indeed, the first international conference on water, held in Mar del Plata (Argentina) from March 14 to 25, 1977, had a major impact on dialog at the global level and on the development of United Nations programs. It led to the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981–1990), which, among other things, aimed to reduce the incidence of water-related diseases.

Many international events and initiatives have followed one another on the issue of water - a determinant of health - since the Mar del Plata conference in 1977, sometimes under the aegis of the United Nations, sometimes under that of international financial institutions, but also within the framework of ad hoc forums where multinationals and their supporters played a preponderant role [6]. In January 1992, the International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin made an alarming observation: the world water situation is in danger, fresh water is scarce and its use must be done with consideration [7]. This observation was taken up at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and was the subject of chapter 18 of Agenda 21 established at the time ("Protection of freshwater resources and their quality: application of integrated approaches to in value, management and use of water resources").

The adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from the United Nations Millennium Declaration [8] embraced a vision of the world in which developed and developing countries would fight together against poverty. At the signing of the said declaration, the number of people without access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation facilities around the world was alarming: 1.1 (or 17% of the world population) and 2.4 billion, respectively [9]. The majority reside in precarious neighborhoods, especially in countries without running water and adequate sanitation systems, and mainly use traditional methods for their provision [10–12].

Among the MDG goals, target 7 (c) aimed to halve, by 2015, the percentage of the population without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation services. WHO/UNICEF [13] report that in 2010, the global MDG target for drinking water was reached in 2010. According to this report [13]: (i) 91% of the world population used 2010 improved water point; (ii) 96% of the world's urban population uses improved water points compared to 84% in rural areas; (iii) in 2015, 663 million people still do not have access to water points. Improved water supply; (iv) 2.4 billion people still do not have improved sanitation facilities.

The PNUD [14] reports "beyond the issue of water supply for personal and domestic use, the lack of safe water and sanitation infrastructure is also a leading causes of poverty and malnutrition, and insecure water supplies linked to climate change threaten to increase the number of people affected by malnutrition, which is *The Challenge of Water in the Sanitary Conditions of the Populations Living in the Slums… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96321*

expected to reach between 75 and 125 million by 2080". This analysis is of particular concern to the human settlement of CANAAN. This slum constitutes in itself a particular epidemiological environment, where the absence of collective collection of solid waste, of drainage of domestic wastewater and the consumption of water of non-guaranteed quality promotes the circulation of pathogenic germs which constitute risk factors for the health of the population and the environment [15]. The objective of this study is to study the challenge of water in the daily sanitary conditions of the populations living in the slums of Canaan. This work revolves around two main axes: (i) firstly, urbanization and sanitary conditions (water, sanitation and hygiene) in the slums of Port-au-Prince are addressed; (ii) the second axis traces the history of Canaan, a shanty town built in a drought-stricken area.
