Lessons and future focus of sanitation and hygiene

Published on: 02/08/2011

What works in hygiene and sanitation programming and what does not? Why, with so many good experiences and advances, are basic needs and challenges not met? What are our future priorities?

These questions were addressed in eight regional practitioners’ workshops, held in four continents, during which 250 professionals shared experiences and research findings on sanitation and hygiene promotion between the period of 2007 and 2011. With over 100 papers delivered and deliberated upon, discussion in the workshops provided remarkable insight into hygiene and sanitation in WASH programming worldwide.

Of the eight regional workshops, seven were organised by the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre with its partners. The eighth, a hygiene practitioners’ workshop in Melbourne, was organised by WaterAid Australia and attended by IRC.

A report, Lessons learnt from sanitation and hygiene practitioners’ workshops 2007-2011 (see the link below), highlights the commonalities and innovative thinking arising from the deliberations in all eight workshops. It underscores the urgent need to prioritise sanitation and hygiene in WASH programmes and details key intervention strategies that are helpful in improving governance and enhancing, for example, urban/rural programming, financing, and monitoring.

Six actions needed

It lists the actions needed as:

1. Prioritising sanitation and hygiene
2. Devising better strategies for sanitation and hygiene
3. Implementing strategies better: management, capacity, roles focusing on management, mobilisation and governance among partners
4. Addressing the challenges to reach the urban poor
5. Financing and reaching poor people
6. Monitoring and measuring

 Future focus

The workshops and papers point to several recommendations where efforts and resources should be concentrated in the next three to eight years.

• Switching and sometimes contradictory trends in sanitation and hygiene programmes should give way to a more consistent, reflective, longer, and well-monitored efforts. Sanitation and hygiene programmes should also be based on a holistic framework  that covers a broad geographic scope so that issues of sustainability and scale are addressed. More intensive focus should also be directed to supporting the poor and slum dwellers in towns and cities.

• Greater attention should be given to priorities integral to good management, such as intensive supervision, field contacts and capacity building. Good management also requires placing accountability and transparency mechanisms on the agenda. A decisive shift towards establishing partnerships between local government, civil society, the private sector and community members and developing the capacities in ways that facilitate responsiveness to a specific situation are key to improving management.

• We need to expand our knowledge base by carrying out research on the specific challenges and problems already recognised in the different sanitation and hygiene strategies. We can accelerate efforts to expand this knowledge base by applying practical monitoring tools and using innovative tools that study behavioural change.

• Future programmes are more effective when they are informed by the best of the past – learning from and building on existing and viable strategies and institutions – as opposed to focusing on the creation of new ones. The same goes for scaling up strategies where the application of participatory approaches, social marketing and community approaches have proven to be useful in advancing sanitation and hygiene practices and conditions.

The workshops

 The findings are based on the following  workshops:

• East Africa practitioners’ workshop on pro-poor urban sanitation and hygiene (29-31 March 2011, Kigali, Rwanda) hosted by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Rwanda; supported by IRC, the German International Cooperation (GIZ), UNICEF Regional Office, WaterAid and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC).

• South Asia hygiene practitioners’ workshop (1–4 February 2010, Dhaka, Bangladesh) co-organised by IRC, BRAC Bangladesh, WaterAid and the WSSCC.

• Community of practice learning workshop on hygiene promotion (June 2010, Melbourne, Australia) organised by WaterAid Australia.

• Seminario de intercambio de experiencias sobre gobernanza de servicios de saneamiento sostenibles en Centroamérica (1-3 February 2010, San Salvador, El Salvador) supported by IRC, Red de Agua y Saniemento de el Salvador, Red Regional de Saniemento de Centroamerica (RRAS-CA) and the WSSCC.

• Partnerships for sanitation for the urban poor: learning & sharing workshop (24-25 November 2009, Maputo Mozambique)  hosted by Conselho de Regulação do Abastecimento de Agua; co-convened by the IRC, WSSCC and Building Partnerships for Development (BPD Water and Sanitation);  supported by the CoWater Consultores in Maputo and the Water Sanitation Program in Mozambique.

• West Africa regional sanitation and hygiene symposium (3-5 November 2009, Accra, Ghana) jointly organised by IRC, the Resource Centre Network Ghana, UNICEF, West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI) and WaterAid; supported by the WSSCC.

• South Asian sanitation & hygiene practitioners’ workshop (29-31 January 2008, Dhaka, Bangladesh) co-organised by IRC, BRAC Bangladesh, WaterAid and the WSSCC.

• Seminar for practitioners on household and school sanitation and hygiene in East and Southern Africa (19-21 November 2007, Moshi, Tanzania) supported by IRC, UNICEF East and Southern Africa and the WSSCC.