Opinions and voices for change
Navigate the blogs from our experts, water, sanitation and hygiene sector colleagues and guests. Narrow down your search by using the filters.
Today there are more people without access to adequate sanitation than in 2000, despite the commitment included in the MDGs to halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to basic sanitation. So what are the key challenges to increase the number of people with access to... Read more...
Thinking critically about how you do your work and seeing the bigger picture towards which you are working, can improve the effectiveness of your work. Read more...
According to UNICEF, the majority of schools in Burkina Faso don't have drinking water or sanitation facilities. This has been identified as one of the major obstacles to children's education in the country. Read more...
700 FSM fans can't be wrong. Faecal sludge management is hot but we need to collaborate more to see the big picture. Forget pilots, think at scale! Read more...
Dans la foulée des changements sociopolitiques d'octobre 2014 au Burkina Faso, les conseils municipaux de l'ensemble des communes du pays ont été dissous. En perdant leurs partenaires clés, les ONG et associations conduisant des projets d'eau potable et d'assainissement doivent désormais trouver de... Read more...
How does India's new large-scale sanitation monitoring effort compare with similar initiatives in Bangladesh and Indonesia? Read more...
In Bangladesh, the lack of separate latrines for girls and menstrual hygiene facilities in secondary schools are major factors in the disproportionate rate of absence and dropout of adolescent girls. Read more...
Participants from IRC, the BRAC WASH programme and Biosol Energy BVAs have been on a study trip to China as part of ongoing action research on the productive use of faecal sludge. This one-week study tour was supervised by the Centre for Sustainable Environmental Sanitation (CSES) at the University... Read more...
Today is World Toilet Day. On this day, the United Nations along with governments and organisations worldwide ask attention for sanitation and for the 2.5 billion people that lack access to safe and hygienic toilets and latrines. On this day, IRC presents the working paper "Towards Systemic Change... Read more...
A lot of effort is put into getting everyone in the world access to clean drinking water and adequate sanitary services, but is everyone really included? As recent as 2011 the first ever world report on disability has been published by the World Health Organization and the World Bank (2011). It... Read more...
In this blog, IRC's CEO Patrick Moriarty reflects on Bill Gates's meeting with the Dutch parliamentarians and development organisations to discuss development cooperation in The Hague. Read more...
Construyendo indicadores para el módulo de saneamiento del Sistema de Información de Agua y Saneamiento Rural -SIASAR- Read more...
The Prime Minister has given a call for ‘Swachh Bharat’ (Clean India) as a mass movement to realise Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of a clean India. To make this campaign a success, it needs to become a bureaucratic priority in addition to a political priority. Read more...
IRC is developing a methodology to measure behaviour change in the context of a sanitation programme promoting EcoSan latrines. Read more...
A passionate school teacher took the lead in making his school a model in sanitation. However, the ground in front of the school is an open defecation area. Read more...
IRC développe une méthodologie permettant de mesurer les changements de comportements dans le cadre d’un programme d’assainissement mettant en œuvre des latrines EcoSan. Read more...
What about looking deep into on-going WASH programmes and analysing their strengths and weaknesses? What about designing innovative ways of measuring the effectiveness of these approaches? And what about testing adjustments to their activities to make the interventions even more effective? Read more...
In many parts of the world it is not done to ask questions about someone’s loo or toilet. It is not discussed among neighbours or friends. Usually that is the case in places where sanitation works perfectly and is not considered anything special. Read more...
This second blogpost of three on urban sanitation in Indonesia describes the mismatch between policy and practice. Politicians have set the ambitious target to make Indonesia open defecation free by 2019, but a recent visit to Indonesian municipalities makes me wonder whether striving for the end... Read more...
Communities have an important role to play in sustainable services. In this blog, I present personal highlights reflections from the session on Community-Led Approaches to change in Africa at World Water Week in Stockholm. Read more...