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Published on: 24/07/2020

Burkina at a Glance
Burkina Faso: Human rights at the centre of decision making

"As President of REPHA, I thank the partners for organising this training. The learnings will be useful in our daily work and will benefit the population. Hopefully other parliamentarians can also follow in our footsteps and take this training."
- Honourable Halidou Sanfo, President of Réseau des Parlementaires pour l'Eau, l'Hygiene et l'Assainissement (REPHA)

During 2019, mainly thanks to great political leadership, Banfora district secured more than three-quarters of the finance needed to implement its master plan. This was despite reduced national funding for WASH due to the deteriorating security situation in the country. We're continuing to work with our district partners to support the Mayor of Banfora, Aboubakar Hema, to get this up to 100%.

The Mayor received the prize for 'Best local administrator' at the Pan-African Development Awards ceremony. He dedicated his award to IRC, acknowledging our role in helping local government to serve the entire population of the district with safe and sustainable WASH by 2030.

We also worked with UNICEF to train national government representatives in gender empowerment, and taking a human rights-based approach to WASH. The training will help put people at the centre of national government's policy, legislative and monitoring work. It also inspired the Ministry of Water and Sanitation to review its monitoring
against human rights principles.

Despite the fragile national context, we are making progress. In our advocacy work we continue to emphasise the importance of not neglecting those who live in safe areas but don't have access to proper services. We will continue to share the successes of our work in Banfora district at the national level so that our systems-based approach can act as an example to be replicated.

Find out more about our work in Burkina Faso

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