Residents survey the damage after Cyclone Ana triggered winds and floods in Malawi. There has been a call following the latest flooding for climate-resilient approaches to WASH because damaged infrastructure, especially water infrastructure, has serious health consequences. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Charles Mpaka
Blantyre, Malawi, Feb 22 2022 (IPS)

On the night of January 24, 2022, as Cyclone Ana-triggered rains incessantly rattled on the rusty roof of her house, amid intervals of gusty winds, a thud woke up Josephine Kumwanje from her sleep.

Her heart leapt as she thought thieves had broken into the house.

She summoned some courage, tiptoed to the door of her bedroom, and peered into the dark. She did not see any evidence that the house had been burgled. The windows and the main door were intact.

But she could not sleep because the rain poured down in torrents – until the early hours of the morning when it reduced to a drizzle.

“In a long time, I haven’t seen a combination of heavy rains and strong winds in one night,” she recalls.

In the morning, she saw what that thud was all about: The pit latrine behind her house had collapsed, the slab caving into the hole so that the toilet was no longer usable.

Kumwanje’s latrine was one of the five that had collapsed in the neighbourhood that night. The storm had ripped off the roofs of three houses, and gullies were gorged into areas. The residents could not imagine that such damage was possible.

The tropical depression that formed to the northeast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean around January 21 and swept into the Mozambique Channel caused heavy and incessant rainfall in Malawi on January 24 and 25, resulting in heavy flooding and destruction.

Two cities and 16 of the country’s 28 districts, mainly in the Southern region, had been affected.

The Department of Disaster Management Affairs said in a situation report that between January 24 and February 12, 2022, shows close to one million people had been affected, 190,000 displaced, 46 people killed, and 18 people still missing.

Among the sectors severely hit was water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), including the five latrines in Makhetha Township in Blantyre City – even though they were far away from the ‘eye of the storm’.

A rapid assessment by the WASH cluster of the response team, co-led by UNICEF, has found that over 1,000 boreholes, the primary source of potable water in most rural areas in Malawi, have been destroyed.

Residents walk past storm damage from Cyclone Ana. The storm impacted one million people with 190,000 displaced, 46 people killed, and 18 people still missing. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

Countless more have been contaminated, while 20 piped water schemes have been damaged, leaving an estimated 300,000 people with no or limited access to safe water. A total of 53,962 latrines collapsed.

According to UNICEF, the destruction of the WASH infrastructure could have far-reaching health consequences.

“These conditions entail significant risks of health outbreaks (cholera) with medium to long-term impacts on the health status of children,” Michele Paba, UNICEF Malawi Chief of WASH, tells IPS.

Worse still, the current floods compounded the damages from other recent floods and have reversed progress on recovery.

In March 2019, Malawi was one of the three countries – together with Zimbabwe and Mozambique – through which Cyclone Idai related flooding swept, destroying infrastructure, and affecting more than one million people in the three countries.

In January 2015, Malawi also suffered devastating floods, which killed 106 people, displaced more than 200,000 and affected more than one million people.

The floods also hit twelve of the 17 districts affected by floods in January 2015.

Five of the districts affected this year were the worst hit by Cyclone Idai in 2019 and were among those hardest hits by the 2015 floods.

Details in the Malawi 2015 Floods Post Disaster Needs Assessment Report show the floods had destroyed water facilities such as intake structures, water treatment plants, water supply pipelines, dams, and shallow wells.

The government pegged the recovery and reconstruction budget following the 2015 disaster for the WASH sector alone at 60 million US dollars.

But, as Charles Kalemba, Commissioner for the Department of Disaster Management Affairs, which is in the Office of President and Cabinet, indicates, Malawi has never recovered from these disasters.

“Floods have happened in this country several times in the past few years. In recent times, we had one in 2015. We had another in 2019, and now these. They happen, they attract our attention, and we forget soon afterwards. We have not been good at recovery and resilience at all,” Kalemba says.

Back in Blantyre, Kumwanje rebuilt her latrine in a week.

“I have children. For dignity and hygiene, I could not count on neighbours’ toilets,” says the mother of three, who earns a living selling second-hand clothes.

But the structure, made of plastic sheets, is temporary. It cannot withstand a similar storm.

Kalemba says the country needs serious work in preparedness and resilience, adding that the department is now eyeing a radical shift in strategy.

“We need to relook at financing. The money should not just be used to buy top-of-the-range vehicles for offices. We need to tackle real issues affecting people in the long term.

“Besides, we leave our response in the hands of development partners, but we can see people in these affected areas are becoming poorer. That shows us that the strategy we are using is not working. We need to take full control of the recovery processes, including finding our own resources, instead of waiting for donors,” he says.

In terms of WASH, according to UNICEF, the sector is “aggressively moving towards climate-resilient approaches to improve the sustainability of water and sanitation services and ensure value for money of investments made.”

“The main bottleneck at the moment,” says Paba, “is the lack of financial resources to address the needs because official development assistance has drastically declined over the past years and government allocations are limited.”

A February 2020 UNICEF analysis of public expenditure on the WASH sector in Malawi says that despite limited fiscal space, the government has increased budget allocations to the sector since 2017-18.

Between 2014 and 2019, the government funding averaged 0.39 percent of total expenditure, or just under 0.1 percent of GDP – with much of it heavily tilted towards water.

However, the report notes that Malawi’s budget allocations to WASH as a proportion of GDP is low compared to other countries in the region.

Apart from proposing the government adjusts to reductions in external funding and fixing the frontline staff deficit, the report recommends increased government financing towards WASH, especially for operations.

Paba tells IPS that the Ministry of Water and Sanitation, with support from UNICEF, is developing a climate-resilient financing strategy to help mobilise fresh investments to address sector needs and create a climate risk-informed investment plan.

The government, through the National Sanitation and Hygiene Strategy (2018 – 2024), is targeting increasing the number of households with improved sanitation access from 13.8 percent as it was in 2018 to 75 percent by 2030 and increasing the number of people accessing safe water supply from 83 percent to 90 percent by 2030.

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Experts say proper hygiene, especially during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life is critical. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Feb 15 2022 (IPS)

For two days in a row back in 2018, four-year-old Calvin Otieno suffered from diarrhoea and vomiting, and his mother responded by giving him a salt solution.

Pearl Otieno tells IPS that diarrhoea among children in Kibera, the largest urban informal settlement, is commonplace. A mixture of salt and warm water is often the go-to remedy.

“He did not seem to get worse, but he was not getting better either. He lay on the floor too weak to play,” she says.

It was too late by the time Otieno realized the magnitude of the situation and rushed her son to the nearby Mbagathi Hospital.

Kibera has long been synonymous with ‘flying toilets’, where residents relieve themselves in bags during nighttime and throw them away at dawn because they lack toilets inside their homes and fear using public toilets due to insecurity.

“Open defecation, flying toilets, lack of water and money to buy soap, people dumping household and human waste in open spaces is the life that children in the slums are exposed to,” says Nelson Mutinda, a Community Health Volunteer working hand-in-hand with a local NGO.

But Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) challenges are not limited to informal settlements in this East African nation.

Overall, even though Kenyans have access to safe drinking water at 59 percent, according to UNICEF statistics, only 29 percent of the population has access to basic sanitation.

In all, five million Kenyans practise open defecation, a problem that statistics by the World Bank show is similarly prevalent in many low- and middle-income countries.

Open defecation is prevalent in Chad, Benin, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Madagascar, Niger, Namibia, and Sao Tome and Principal. Only a handful of countries such as South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda, Seychelles, Mauritania, and the Gambia have successfully addressed access to sanitation.

World Health Organization (WHO) data indicates that Africa is not on track to achieve universal access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation in keeping with global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In the absence of increased investments in WASH interventions, the health body stresses that Africa will remain off track due to the added pressure from climate change and projected growth in population.

Against this backdrop, WHO says children in Sub-Saharan Africa are at least 14 times more likely to die before their fifth birthday than children in developed nations.

According to government statistics, in Kenya, at least 64,500 children die every year before reaching the age of five. Three-quarters of these deaths occur before their first birthday.

Mary Wanjiru, a pediatric nurse at Mbagathi Hospital, tells IPS that, like Otieno, many die from preventable diseases because the primary cause of death is diarrhoea, pneumonia, or neonatal complications.

“It is very important for mothers to understand that proper hygiene, especially during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, is a very important pillar of child health. Poor hygiene can lead to death or a child failing to reach their full developmental and growth potential,” she says.

“WASH interventions are pillars of maternal, newborn and general child health because they prevent life-threatening infections such as tetanus, diarrhoea, sepsis and helps reduce stunted growth.”

According to USAID research, proper hygiene is a fragile pillar in Africa’s low- and middle-income countries.

In all, 50 percent of health care facilities lack piped water, 33 percent lack improved sanitation, 39 percent lack handwashing soap, 39 percent lack adequate infectious waste disposal, and 73 percent lack sterilization equipment, research shows.

While WASH interventions, such as safe drinking water, proper handwashing practices, and even basic sanitation, could prevent an estimated 297,000 global deaths among children under the age of five every year, this goal is not within reach for many Sub-Saharan African countries.

Hand washing, says the WHO, is the single most cost-effective strategy to prevent pneumonia and diarrhoea in young children successfully.

Still, data from UNICEF and WHO Joint Monitoring Programme released in August 2020 shows that an estimated 818 million of the world’s children lacked basic handwashing facilities within their schools. Of these children, 295 million live in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Overall, seven out of 10 schools lacked basic handwashing facilities in the least developed countries worldwide.

It is within this context that UNICEF paints a dire picture. Over 700 children worldwide under the age of five die daily of diarrheal diseases because of a lack of appropriate WASH services.

Children in conflict situations are especially vulnerable because they are nearly 20 times more likely to die from diarrheal diseases than in conflict.

“For ten years, I have worked in four slums in Nairobi. I find it very shocking that people have not understood how serious diarrhoea in children is. But small children will be given a mixture of water and salt, and sometimes some herbs and people just take the situation very lightly,” Mutinda observes.

Wanjiru agrees. She says that diarrhoea can escalate to a fatality within a matter of hours, “by the time mothers rush to the hospital with children suffering from acute watery diarrhoea, it is sometimes a losing race against time. Any form of illness among children should never be a wait-and-see situation. Seek immediate medical attention.”

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11-year-old Fatoumata Binta (left) and her brother Iphrahima Tall (right) collect water from a dry river bed. This summer, the family has struggled to get enough water. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERBAD, India, Jul 22 2020 (IPS)

With Tabaski (Eid al-Adha) around the corner, 11-year-old Fatoumata Binta from Terrou Mballing district in M’Bour, western Senegal, wakes up early and joins her brothers Iphrahima Tall and Ismaila to fetch water from a river several miles from home.

This summer, the family has struggled to get enough water as city taps have often run dry. But because of the coronavirus, they need extra water for maintaining cleanliness and frequent handwashing.

But there is another reason why they need additional water.

In a few weeks time, Muslim families will sacrifice a livestock animal to mark Tabaski. Binta’s family have been raising goats to sell on the market ahead of the festival, but the animals need lots of water. 

“If they don’t drink enough, the goats will lose weight and sell for less,” Binta, who has not been to school since March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, tells IPS.

Schools in Senegal, which closed on Mar. 15, were scheduled to reopen on Jun 2. However, the return was cancelled as several teachers tested positive for the coronavirus across the country, but mainly in Ziguinchor in the southern Casamence region. To date, the country has officially counted more than 8,985 coronavirus cases, including 174 deaths.

But when schools reopen in August-September, Binta might not return. The reason, she says, is that her community school doesn’t have enough water. Besides, there are no toilets for girls and Binta, who has just begun to menstruate, feels too shy to use a shared toilet.

Poor WASH Reflects Low Priority

According to the recently published United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report on global education, only one percent of schools in Senegal have separate toilets for girls. The dismal performance has actually put the country at the bottom of a list of 45 developing countries.

Experts say that the core reason behind this is the low priority attached to girls’ education. Although the government has been focusing on girls’ enrolment at elementary level, the focus on improving their water and sanitation needs has remained a neglected subject.

Fatou Gueye Seck, programme coordinator from the Coalition of Organisations in Energy for the Defence of Public Education (COSYDEP Senegal), shares an example. 

Since 2016, the number of people enrolled in Functional Literacy Centres (CAF) has fallen by more than half, with the number of learners decreasing from 34,373 to 15,435. This underperformance is explained by the insufficiency of the overall amount of funding for CAFs.

“The funding is supposed to be one percent of [public spending] but in reality that is not happening. Unless the funding is increased, in the middle and secondary cycles, gender parity in the country’s education sector cannot be reached until 2021,” Seck tells IPS.

Seck is also the president of the education theme of the Deliver for Good Senegal campaign, an evidence-based advocacy and communication platform that promotes the health, rights and wellbeing of girls and women. The campaign is part of a larger, global campaign powered by Women Deliver.

“In Senegal, the gender index is still against girls,” Seck told IPS in an earlier interview.

Girl students at a school in the Pikine suburb of Dakar, Senegal. A recent United Nations report says, only one percent of schools have a separate toilet for girls. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Growing water crisis in urban areas

In urban Senegal, water shortages have been frequent for several years, affecting thousands of households. 

But this summer, the shortage has been more acute, as most homes have seen their taps run dry or reduced to a trickle. 

In recent weeks during the  emergency coronavirus lockdown, protests have rocked both the streets of the capital Dakar and M’Bour, a city in western Senegal. Many citizens complained that water supply has worsened since this January when the government signed over the rights of water distribution and management, for 15-years, to a private company called Sen’eau.

As the protests grew, the company made a public statement, blaming the crisis on a storm that damaged some of its infrastructure and promised to normalise distribution by next year.

The government has also assured the public that a solution will be found. On Jun. 17, following a cabinet meeting, Senegalese President Macky Sall stressed  “the imperative to mobilise technical expertise and financial resources to ensure the optimal functioning of hydraulic infrastructures”.

But in the meantime, citizens are spending extra money on purchasing water. Although the rainy season arrived in July, urban Senegal is still struggling with supply shortages of daily water.

Fatima Faye, a 23-year-old health worker in M’Bour, tells IPS that she spends $10 every week on purchasing water: “The taps only give droplets, but the water bills are quite big.”

Unsafe water affecting education

According to Global Waters, an agency supported by the USAID Center for Water Security, Sanitation, and Hygiene, 49 percent people in Senegal lack access to proper sanitation facilities while 20 percent of Senegalese don’t have access to safe drinking water.

For them the only source of water are open wells and rivulets. So they drink non-potable, unfiltered and untreated water.

Amina Diop, a fruit seller from Guediyawaye, a suburb in Dakar, has been using an open well for all her domestic water needs. Her entire family, including her two daughters, also drink from the same water source. 

Before the lockdown began, one of her girls, 10-year-old  Aminata, often missed school. “Her stomach ran, so I just let her be at home,” Diop tells IPS. Aminata was likely ill because of contaminants in the water source.

But a Women Deliver policy brief on access for girls and women to resources such as water and sanitation notes the benefits of “bringing sanitation options closer to or within the home is a critical improvement for women in the community”.

“It means they won’t have to walk long distances to find a site that is private, which decreases the risk of gender-based violence. It saves them time and energy, reduces their exposure to violence, and improves their nutritional status, which in turn has a positive impact on their reproductive health and pregnancy outcomes,” the brief notes.

It also notes a 2012 study in sub-Saharan Africa that showed a 15-minute decrease in time spent walking to a water source is associated with;

• 41 percent average reduction in diarrhoea prevalence, 
• 11 percent reduction in under-5 mortality, and
• improvements in the nutritional status of children.

Menstrual hygiene takes a hit

According to a 2017 survey done by Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) — the United Nations-hosted organisation dedicated to advancing Sustainable Development Goal 6 of providing clean water and sanitation for all people — 56 percent of girls students in Senegal miss school due to menstruation and inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene facilities.

Some Senegalese NGOs have started to fill the knowledge gap by holding informal classes and workshops with young female students. One of these is Apiafrique, a Dakar-based social enterprise that produces environment-friendly feminine hygiene products,

Marina Gning, the CEO of Apiafrique, has held several workshops for school-going students over the last two years where she teaches them the importance of maintaining menstrual hygiene and also trains them in making sanitary pads that can be reused.

“Throughout Africa, women and girls are often thought of as impure during menstrual cycles, and face societal exclusion, as well as a lack of adequate sanitation infrastructure in schools and homes,” Gning tells IPS.

Between the fight against pandemic, which requires extra water for frequent handwashing, and the country’s water-supply crisis, maintaining menstrual hygiene has become a challenge.

“The challenge now, is keeping the sanitary pads clean. Reusable pads means something that you need to wash. But if there is not enough water, how can you do any washing? So, what use can you make of the knowledge?” Amelie Ndecky, a college student who attended one of Gning’s workshops in 2018 in Ngaparou, a suburb of M’Bour, asks IPS.

Her questions remain unanswered.  

Newly arrived Rohingya people wait at an army camp in Sabrang in Teknaf on Nov. 29, 2017 before being shifted to a camp in Cox's Bazar. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

By Farid Ahmed
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Dec 16 2017 (IPS)

Ferdous Begum was cleaning her child after he had defecated in the open, using leaves she collected from a nearby tree at Bangladesh’s Teknaf Nature Park. The settlement is packed with Rohingya refugees who fled military persecution in Myanmar since August.

“Access to water is terrible here,” Begum said. “We’ve only a couple of hand-dug shallow wells and we don’t get enough water from the wells for so many people living in the camp.”“Initially we received patients with bullet, burn and stab injuries. Now we’re getting more patients with waterborne and cold-related diseases and the number is increasing.” --Dr. Dipongkor Binod Sharma

Other camps near Teknaf are also facing acute shortages of water, especially access to drinking and clean water, while aid workers face difficulties with hygiene management for the refugees crammed in squalid camps stretching from Teknaf to Ukhia in Cox’s Bazar.

The latest UN report shows an estimated 655,000 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh after fleeing violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, increasing the total Rohingya population in Cox’s Bazar to 867,000 since Aug. 25.

The report said new arrivals were living in spontaneous settlements with increasing demand for humanitarian assistance, including shelter, food, clean water, and sanitation.

Ferdous Begum said her son was unwell last night, with a stomach upset. “Misfortune follows us anywhere we go,” Begum said.

Aid workers said refugees, especially pregnant women, lactating mothers and children were exposed to the risk of health hazards because of water shortages that led to poor hygiene management.

Diphtheria is rapidly spreading among Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned last week.

In one month, as of Dec. 12, a total of 804 suspected diphtheria cases, including 15 deaths, were reported among the displaced Rohingya population in Cox’s Bazar.

The first suspected case was reported on Nov. 10 by a clinic of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Cox’s Bazar, according to the WHO.

A number of aid workers working in the field said hygiene was very important to prevent disease outbreaks in these overcrowded camps.

Many of the latrines made initially were already overflowing and faecal sludge was seen in the open in almost every camp. And many of the tubewells or hand-pumps are broken, shortening the supply of safe water.

Dr. Dipongkor Binod Sharma of Dhaka Community Hospital Trust, who has been working with Rohingya refugees since the latest influx began in August, said, “Initially we received maximum patients with bullet, burn and stab injuries. Now we’re getting more patients with waterborne and cold-related diseases and the number is increasing.”

Dr. Sharma said a large number of his patients were women and children suffering from acute malnutrition and anaemia, as most of the pregnant and lactating women were very young – many still in their teens.

“Hygiene is very crucial for them, but it seems they are not aware,” he said.

A Rohingya girl proudly holds up her drawing at a UNICEF school at Balukhali camp, Bangladesh. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

A Rohingya refugee named Gul Nahar rushed to a BRAC aid centre with her six-month-old boy, Mohammad Haras, seeking help. “He’s been suffering from high fever along with diarrhoea for the last 10 days,” Nahar said.

Nahar said the seven members of her family were living together in a single shanty room.

WaterAid Bangladesh country director Dr. Md Khairul Islam told IPS he was aware of water shortages in the camps in Teknaf. “The situation might be exacerbated when local farmers start irrigation for their crops in the area soon,” he added.

Executive director of the government’s Institute of Water Modelling, Professor M Monowar Hossain, told IPS there were plans to initiate a survey to ascertain the level of ground water there.

“It’s a part of the national survey… It’s not particularly for the Rohingya issue. [But] Until we do the survey, we can’t say there is any scarcity of water,” said Prof Hossain, a former dean of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).

Local people fear the presence of over half a million Rohingyas will put additional pressure on water sources and that would worsen the situation in the coming months.

They warned about a severe water crisis in the later part of winter, when the groundwater level naturally goes down.

Rohingyas in the Jadimora area said that they were trying to collect water from tubewells in local communities, but on many occasions they’d been barred.

In the absence of safe water, Rohingyas in makeshift camps in Damdamia Nature Park, Jadimora, Alikhali, and Unchiprang areas of Teknaf are collecting water from ponds, waterfalls and other untreated sources.

“Nobody is supplying drinking water for us. We collect water from a nearby pond,” said a Rohingya community leader in the Damdamia area, Rashid Ullah.

Many Rohingyas built makeshift shelters in forest preserves, felling trees and setting up shanties on hilly slopes. Other have taken refuge at overcrowded registered and unregistered camps.

The haphazard sprouting of camps makes it hard to supply safe drinking water to Rohingyas, aid workers said.

Department of Public Health Engineering officials said for the Rohingyas who took shelter in wild forests and hills, safe drinking water facilities like tube wells are nonexistent.

“We can’t say we have reached all Rohingyas with safe drinking water and other facilities as they are living scattered,” Refugee Relief and Repatriation commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam of Cox’s Bazar told IPS.

“Particularly in Teknaf, we wanted to relocate those Rohingyas facing shortage of water to other camps, but they were not interested,” Kalam said.

Aid workers say the Rohingya influx has slowed down, but several hundred refugees still arrive every day, adding pressure on both the government and humanitarian relief groups.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has constructed more than 3,800 latrines and 159 wells in six host community locations – Whykong, Palonkhali, Jaliapalong, Kutupalong, Rajapalong and Baharchora.

“Access to clean water and safe sanitation services is a problem for the communities hosting refugees in Cox’s Bazar,” said Alessandro Petrone, WASH Programme Manager for IOM’s Rohingya Response, in a statement earlier this month.

“A global and up to date WASH assessment providing a proper gaps analysis and an activities plan is urgently needed. IOM is developing a rated assessment tool and will deploy teams to the field in the coming days to support this work,” said Petrone.

The Inter-Sector Coordination Group (ISCG), of which IOM is a part, reported this week that the humanitarian situation for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh remained dire.

The inter-agency Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) for 2017-18 identified the areas of WASH, health, nutrition and food security and shelter for immediate scale-up to save lives in both settlements and host communities, it said.

As per the HRP, the Rohingya population in Cox’s Bazar is highly vulnerable, many having experienced severe trauma, and are now living in extremely difficult conditions.

The limited WASH facilities in the refugee established settlements, put in place by WASH sector partners, including UNICEF, prior to the current influx, are over-stretched, with an average of 100 people per latrine, the report said.

New arrivals also have limited access to bathing facilities, especially women, and urgently require WASH supplies including soap and buckets.

Given the current population density and poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, any outbreak of cholera or Acute Watery Diarrhoea (AWD), which are endemic in Bangladesh, could kill thousands of people residing in temporary settlements, the report warned.

he series of reports from the border areas of Myanmar and Bangladesh is supported by UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC)

Excerpt:

Rohingya women of Balukhali camp embarking on the trek to the toilets. Credit: Umer Aiman Khan/IPS

By Sohara Mehroze Shachi
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Dec 7 2017 (IPS)

Afia* lines up her bucket every morning in the refugee camp for water delivery from humanitarian relief workers. On one particularly sweltering day, she kept four water pitchers in a row with gaps between them, hoping to insert another empty container in the space when the water arrived.

When another refugee saw this, she kicked away Afia’s pitchers, and a raging quarrel broke out. That night, the woman’s local boyfriend attacked Afia in her house, kicking her in the belly and hitting her mercilessly with a chair. Afia kept mum about the incident as her assailant threatened to kidnap and rape her in the jungle if she sought arbitration.

Afia is not one of the half a million Rohingyas who came into Bangladesh since this August from Myanmar. She is one of the thousands who have been living in the camps for years, and the water crisis has been exacerbated by the latest influx of refugees.

In the camps, men usually collect relief and water, with women going only when there are no males available. Since her husband left for Malaysia three years ago in search of work, she has not received any news from him and lives on her own in the camp, where scarcity of water is a heated issue and results in frequent altercations between the resident refugees.

While tubewells exist in the camps, many of them are dysfunctional as they are either too shallow and can no longer pump water, or have broken handles so no one can use them.

A dysfunctional tubewell in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. Credit: Sohara Mehroze Shachi/IPS

Toilets

Women’s tribulations in the refugee camps do not end with water. Access to toilets is also a major problem. And the speed and scale of the recent influx – 624,000 arrivals since August and counting – have put basic services that were available in the camps prior to the influx are under severe strain. Spontaneous settlements have also sprung up to accommodate the new arrivals and these lack many basic amenities.

“There are no separate latrines for the women; the ones that exist do not have any lighting, are not close to their shelters and there’s absolutely no privacy,” said Shouvik Das, External Relations Officer of The UN Refugee Agency UNHCR in Bangladesh. “When we go to distribute food, sometimes the female refugees don’t want to take it because they then will need to go to the toilets and they dread that,” he added.

While many foreign and local NGOs and relief workers had set up tube wells and latrines for the refugees living in the camps, a safe distance was often not maintained between the latrines and the tubewells.

“Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) found that over 60 per cent of water sources tested in the settlements were contaminated with E.coli. Much of the contamination is a result of shallow wells located less than 30 feet away from latrines,” said Olivia Headon, Information Officer for Emergencies with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which is providing vital WASH services to both the Rohingya and the communities hosting them.

“While IOM supports private WASH and sanitation areas to provide privacy and safety to women in the Bangladeshi community, similar areas are under development in the Rohingya settlements but are hindered by the lack of space,” she explained.

Cotton used for menstruation dried on roofs of shacks in Kutupalong Camp. Credit: Umer AIman Khan/IPS

Risks of disease outbreak

Labeled as the world’s most persecuted minority by the UN, the Rohingya lacked access to many basic rights in Myanmar, including healthcare. A large number of the new surge of refugees had been suffering from various diseases before their arrival, including Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and Polio, and are now staying in cramped camps.

Their squalid living conditions, combined with scarcity of safe water and sanitation facilities, have triggered fears among health experts of disease outbreaks. And women, with their limited mobility and resources, are particularly at risk.

“Women will have to bear a disproportionate risk of the public health burden, and will be at the receiving end of all the negative environmental fallouts,” says Sudipto Mukerjee, Country Director of United Nations Development Program, Bangladesh.

The female refugees suffer the worst during their menstrual cycles, with most of them reusing unsanitary rags or cotton for months. This is not only increasing their risks of infection and skin diseases, but also affecting their mobility. As a recently published report by the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR reads, “Women and girls are limiting their movement because of not only the fear of being harassed, kidnapped or trafficked but also because of their lack of appropriate clothing and sanitary napkins.”

However, while development organizations have been supplying sanitary products to the refugee women, many of them do not know how to use them because they have never had access to them.

“Some of them put the sanitary pads as masks on their faces because they simply didn’t know what to do with them,” said Dr. Lailufar Yasmin, Professor of Gender Studies at BRAC University who has been working with the refugees in the camps.

“If the people who you are working with do not know what to do with the help you are providing, it will not be effective,” she added, “You will only be wasting money.”

*Names have been changed to protect the refugees’ identities.

The series of reports from the border areas of Myanmar and Bangladesh is supported by UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC)

Excerpt:

People fetch water from the new well in the village of Htita, Myanmar. It is 600 feet deep and was built thanks to private donations. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By Sara Perria
HTITA, Myanmar, May 25 2016 (IPS)

The central plains of Myanmar, bordered by mountains on the west and east, include the only semi-arid region in South East Asia – the Dry Zone, home to some 10 million people. This 13 percent of Myanmar’s territory sums up the challenges that the country faces with respect to water security: an uneven geographical and seasonal distribution of this natural resource, the increasing unpredictability of rain patterns due to climate change, and a lack of water management strategies to cope with extreme weather conditions.

Using water resources more wisely is critical, according to NGOs and institutional actors like the Global Water Partnership, which organized a high-level roundtable on water security issues in Yangon on May 24. UN data shows that only about five percent of the country’s potential water resources are being utilised, mostly by the agricultural sector. At the same time, growing urbanisation and the integration of Myanmar into the global economy after five decades of military dictatorship are enhancing demand.

The new government of the de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi now faces the major challenge of delivering solutions to support the country’s rapid economic growth.

A hydroponic greenhouse allows farmers in Myanmar’s Dry Zone to grow vegetable saving up to 90 percent of water. The project is promoted by NGO Terres Des Hommes using technology developed by the University of Bologna and involves over 40 villages. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Water tanks and pots are used to store water all over Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

A water carrier in Myanmar’s Dry Zone. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

The arid village of Htita, in Bago region, Myanmar. The artificial ponds traditionally used to collect water are empty at the end of the dry season. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Members of Myanmar’s Htee Tan village community. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

A temporary water tank in Myanmar’s Dry Zone. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Water tanks and pots are used to store water all over Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Speakers at the high level roundtable on Water Security and the Sustainable Development Goals held at Inya Lake Hotel in Yangon, Myanmar on May 24, 2016. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Water tanks and pots are used to store water all over Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By an IPS Correspondent
YANGON, Myanmar, May 24 2016 (IPS)

Lack of water management and limited access to data risk hindering Myanmar’s economic growth, making water security a top priority of the new government.

Climate change and increased urbanisation, along with earthquakes, cyclones, periodic flooding and major drought, require an urgent infrastructural upgrade if the country is to undergo a successful integration into the global economy after five decades of economic isolation under military rule.

“Water resources are abundant in Myanmar. However, we need to manage it properly to get adequate and clean water,” said Yangon regional government chief minister U Phyo Min Thein, attending a high-level roundtable on water security organised by Stockholm-based facilitator Global Water Partnership on May 24 in Yangon.

According to IMF data, Myanmar is the fastest growing economy in the world, following an easing of sanctions in 2011, when the military handed power to a semi-civilian reformist government.

“Water security is a priority for the new government,” said Myanmar’s deputy minister of Transport and Communication U Kyaw Myo.

The challenges inherited by the now de facto leader of the country Aung San Suu Kyi, however, are enormous. An expected industrial development and urbanisation boom are only going to make more urgent the need for efficient water management solutions in one of the most challenging areas of South Asia.

Water in Myanmar is plentiful, but regional and seasonal differences are so striking that the country covers the whole range of threats posed by water insecurity: flooding in the delta’s numerous rivers, flash floods in the mountains and Dry Zone, droughts and deadly cyclones. Malnutrition and illnesses are the first consequences.

Safe drinking water is also limited. Groundwater sources are highly unexploited, but those available are often saline or contaminated, mainly by natural arsenic. Villages rely extensively on open air communal ponds to collect fresh water during the rainy season. These, however, dry out quickly during the summer.

“It is important to activate stakeholders and trigger a snowball effect at this stage,” said Global Water Partnership chair Alice Bouman. It is equally important, she said, to act only once all parties have been involved and listened to. “The emphasis has to go in particular to the so-called intrinsic indigenous knowledge: only locals have a long understanding of their environment and can help to avoid expensive mistakes.”

Action should focus on how to avert disasters in the first place, not just react afterwards – that was the message coming from the Japanese and the Dutch officials sharing their countries’ knowledge at the conference.

“Investments should happen in advance and go in the direction of disaster reduction, by building better for example, or consider climate change adaptation in time,” said Japan’s vice minister of Land, infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Koji Ikeuchi.

However, said Myanmar Water Think Tank secretary Khin Ni Ni Thein, money is currently not enough. “First we need to build trust between communities and the government. It becomes easier to access to international donors when there is this connection,” she said. “But it is also important that communities pay for the service, to guarantee the structure.”

Informative statistics but also topographical data that would support reforms are scarce in Myanmar. This is partly due to poor infrastructure and fragmented institutions, with up to six ministries in charge of water issues. But the limited access is primarily a consequence of the military still being in charge of three key ministers, including Defence, and reluctant to handover precise topographical information.

The high-level roundtable on Water Security and the Sustainable Development Goals was held less than two months after the government was sworn in. Speakers from Korea, Japan, Australia and the Netherlands stressed how new policies should refer to the framework of the UN 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals. Among these are no poverty, food security, affordable and clean energy, clean water and sanitation and also gender equality.

“A lack of gender perspective is systemic to the region and many countries. We should always target an indicator, such as water and land laws, from a gender perspective. Some women, for example, cannot interact with the institutions without a male presence, [despite the fact that it’s the women in most societies who take care of the water],” said Kenza Robinson, from the UN’s department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Poverty is especially evident in rural areas. According to a 2014 census, 70 percent of the 51.5 million population live in the countryside. Life expectancy is one of the lowest of the entire ASEAN region and much of this is due to water and food security, impacting also on child and maternal mortality.

Over 40 percent of houses in rural areas are made of bamboo, with only 15 percent using electricity for lightening. A third of households in the country use water from “unimproved” water sources. A quarter of the population has no flush toilet.

“Water access is essential to economic development and effective water management requires sound institutions,” concluded Jennifer Sara, global water practice director at the World Bank.

Water tanks and pots are used to store water all over Myanmar. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By Sara Perria
HTITA, May 22 2016 (IPS)

It has been two weeks now since the village of Htita, with its few bamboo houses hemmed in by parched, cracked earth and dried-out ponds, has enjoyed the novelty of its first ever water well.

Young housewife Lei Lei Win walks to the noise of breaking soil to fill two yellow containers previously used for cooking oil. With the weight of the 20-litre ‘buckets’ balanced on a pole on her shoulder, it now takes her only one minute to provide her family with the water that she will need to get washed, cook, and also drink. She usually makes two trips a day.

“I save a lot of time,” says Lei Lei, dressed in a traditional longyi skirt. “Before I had to walk much more to fetch water.”

The nearly 200-metre-deep well is not the result of government planning, but the combined 3,000-dollar donation by a Yangon businessman who hails from the village and a travel agency named Khiri, run by a Dutchman, which donates part of its income to build wells in the driest parts of the country.

Situated in the internal region of Bago, Htita is only a two-hour drive from Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon. Even closer is the village of Kawa. But even if residents are enjoying better living conditions, only a few here can afford to pay some 30 dollars a month – a considerable amount of money in Myanmar – to pump water from a nearby underground water source directly to the house tank.

The arid village of Htita, in Bago region, Myanmar. The artificial ponds traditionally used to collect water are empty at the end of the dry season. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

According to a 2014 census, a third of households in the country of 51.5 million people uses water from “unimproved” water sources. A quarter of the population has no flush toilet. Only an average 32.4 percent of households use electricity for lighting.

The same census found that life expectancy in Myanmar is among the lowest in the ASEAN region. Much of this is due to lack of water and food security, with water scarcity and excess of rainfall playing an equal role.

The central plains of Myanmar, bordered by mountains on the west and east, include the only semi-arid region in South East Asia – the Dry Zone, home to some 10 million people. This 13 percent of Myanmar’s territory sums up the challenges that the country faces with respect to water security: an uneven geographical and seasonal distribution of this natural resource, the increasing unpredictability of rain patterns due to climate change, and a lack of water management strategies to cope with extreme weather conditions.

“Water is abundant and plentiful in Myanmar, but there is little infrastructure and electricity, so the economics of accessing water are problematic. This is why the shortages continue year after year,” says Andrew Kirkwood, fund manager of the Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT), a multi-donor fund that focuses on the rural poor in Myanmar.

About 90 percent of rain in Myanmar falls during the rainy season, from June to October. But geographical differences are enormous: rainfall ranges from 750 mm per year in the most arid region of the country to 1,500 mm in the eastern and western mountains and 4,000 to 5,000 mm in the coastal regions.

People fetch water from the new well in the village of Htita, Myanmar. It is 600 feet deep and was built thanks to private donations. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Shortages in the dry zone have been more acute this year because the scant rains of the year before resulted in limited water-storage, according to LIFT. On top of this, El Nino’s higher temperatures during the following 2016 hot season triggered higher evaporation rates.

However, in other areas of the country, failure in ensuring water security has historically been caused by the opposite: extreme rain and disastrous floods.

With the deadly 2008 cyclone Nargis still engraved in the country’s memory, during the rainy season of 2015 the country had to face another emergency. Vast areas, from states in the North-West to the Delta region, were hit by severe and prolonged rains. With no proper water control measures in place, the outcome of an otherwise-manageable natural phenomenon was disastrous: dozens of deaths and almost two million acres of rice fields either destroyed or damaged, according to UN’s humanitarian disaster agency OCHA.

In both cases – drought and floods – failures in managing water security bring precarious hygiene conditions and illnesses, while the effects on agriculture reflect in high malnutrition rates. In the Dry Zone, 18 percent of the population suffers from malnutrition, according to a 2013 LIFT survey, while a staggering quarter of children under the age of five are underweight.

What to do

The correct administration of water resources is the root of the problem in Myanmar, according to NGOs and institutional actors. UN data shows that only about five percent of the country’s potential water resources are being utilised, mostly by the agricultural sector. At the same time, growing urbanisation and the integration of Myanmar into the global economy after five decades of military dictatorship are enhancing demand.

The new government of the de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi is therefore faced with the major challenge of delivering solutions to support the ongoing economic growth.

“Sixty percent of irrigation in South East Asia comes from groundwater,” says LIFT’s fund manager Kirkwood. “But it’s only six percent in Myanmar. Our knowledge of how much groundwater there is and where this groundwater is, is not good at all.”

A hydroponic greenhouse allows farmers in Myanmar’s Dry Zone to grow vegetable saving up to 90 percent of water. The project is promoted by NGO Terres Des Hommes using technology developed by the University of Bologna and involves over 40 villages. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

Even against the odds of scant resources, farmers in the Dry Zone produce most of Myanmar’s sesame and pulses, making it one of the largest exporters in the world. The economic impact of better exploitation of resources is evident. However, says Kirkwood, investments have been so far misplaced – forcing farmers, for example, into rice cultivation – and policies inefficient, such as not collecting sufficient fees for water.

Terre des Hommes, an NGO, has successfully introduced into the Dry Zone a hydroponic farming system developed by the University of Bologna. The system requires 80-90 percent less water than soil-based farming, while recycling fluids enriched with fertilizers. It allows landless farmers in particular access to fresher and cheaper food.

“The project has involved 45 villages in townships across Mandalay and Magway,” says project manager Enrico Marulli. The latter region has the highest under-five mortality rate in the entire country, more than twice the rate of its biggest city, Yangon, reflecting the urgent need for life-improvement solutions.

But the long-term sustainability of these project finds its limits in the overall restructuring that the country has to endure. With a new greenhouse costing between 70 and 80 dollars, without external donors’ contribution only access to credit can support vital technological improvements.

However, farmers’ financial inclusion is virtually inexistent. In contrast to other developing countries, microfinance in Myanmar goes mainly to the agricultural sector, says LIFT, but only bigger financial institutions have the capacity to sustain longer-term, higher investments.

Al of these issues will come to the fore on May 24, when the Global Water Partnership High Level Roundtable on Water Security and the SDGs will be held in Yangon. The meeting aims to accelerate gains made by ongoing projects related to water and sanitation, under the guidance of the government of Myanmar and the World Bank.

Meanwhile, in the village of Htita, villagers continue to enjoy the revolution of the new well and fill their yellow containers.

By H.R.H. Princess Sarah Zeid
AMMAN, Oct 30 2015 (IPS)

The 193 member states of the United Nations have adopted an ambitious 15-year sustainable development agenda, the 2030 Global Goals.

H.R.H. Princess Sarah Zeid

To enter through the school gates, I had to negotiate a fetid stream of sewage, broken glass and garbage. The condition of the school building itself was terrible, and even worse were the bathrooms. You could see their appalling state because they had no doors, and thus, zero privacy. All this in a place where the temperature can reach above 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius) – it was so hot I felt as if my cheeks were frying.

I look back at this now through the eyes of a mother, and my horror is all the greater. No girl could go to this school, because no girl could go to the bathroom. No child could safely attend this school, because no child could do so without being exposed to disease.

With daughters denied education, confined to home and sons locked in a cycle of exposure to ill health, how can we expect women to participate in commerce, politics, peace and sustainability? How do we think the next generation is going to be educated, skilled and healthy enough to make a positive contribution?

The solutions to women’s and children’s dignity, health and wellbeing lie well beyond the health sector alone, and demand instead an integrated approach, including solutions that deliver water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in health and in education.

No one’s needs divide neatly into our professional sectors, and sustainable wellbeing and prosperity will not come from fragmented interventions. A holistic approach spanning across all these domains is urgently needed.

The linkages between WASH, health, education and nutrition for that matter are stark. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, more than half the cases of measles in the country are caused by lack of clean water, and poor WASH conditions are a leading cause of malnutrition.

Illness and death in childbirth, and in maternal and child health, are not only the result of the lack of access to quality medical care, nursing or pharmaceuticals. They also happen because nearly 40 per cent of health facilities worldwide have no source of water.

In low-income countries – where preventable mortality is at its highest – an estimated 50 per cent of health care facilities lack access to the electricity they need to boil water and sterilize instruments.

WASH also helps promote gender equality. If water, sanitation and hygiene are designed so that the practical burdens women carry daily are reduced, they will be able to play broader and more creative roles in their community’s development, paving the way towards equitable development in countries and globally. Everyone benefits from these contributions.

There is recognition of the importance of joining up. Last autumn, 16 researchers from the World Health Organization, Unicef, WaterAid and others came together to call for action on joining water, sanitation and hygiene to efforts on maternal and newborn health. The World Health Organization has launched an action plan to address the need for water, sanitation and hygiene in healthcare facilities.

This new sustainable development agenda and, quite frankly, the state of the world today, demands of us another dimension of this integration, too: an integration of our development and humanitarian efforts.

The renewed Every Women Every Child Global Strategy for Women and Children’s Health is working to make this happen. Headed by the Office of the UN Secretary General and supported by a global movement of governments, philanthropic institutions, multi-lateral organizations, civil society organizations, the business community and academics, the renewed Strategy gives new priority to humanitarian and fragile settings and pledges the needed integration to save more lives as life is given.

After all, the right to live life in dignity, the rights to health and to water and sanitation are human rights, universal and indivisible. They are rights to be upheld even in the toughest of situations and at the hardest of times. However, without joined-up pipelines of delivery to enable that flow of human dignity for everyone, everywhere, the promise of the Global Goals will just drain away.

(End)

Excerpt:

Children investigate their community's newly improved toilets, one of UNOCI's “quick impact projects” (QIPS) which supported the rehabilitation of schools and toilets in Abidjan. Credit: UN Photo/Patricia Esteve

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 30 2015 (IPS)

As most developing nations fall short of meeting their goals on sanitation, the world’s poorest countries have been lagging far behind, according to a new U.N. report released here.

The Joint Monitoring Programme report, ‘Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and MDG Assessment’, authored by the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO), says one in three people, or 2.4 billion worldwide, are still without sanitation facilities – including 946 million people who defecate in the open.“We cannot have another situation where we appear to be succeeding because the situation of the comparatively wealthy has improved, even as millions of people are still falling ill from dirty water or from environments that are contaminated with faeces." -- Tim Brewer of WaterAid

“What the data really show is the need to focus on inequalities as the only way to achieve sustainable progress,” said Sanjay Wijesekera, head of UNICEF’s global water, sanitation and hygiene programmes.

“The global model so far has been that the wealthiest move ahead first, and only when they have access do the poorest start catching up. If we are to reach universal access to sanitation by 2030, we need to ensure the poorest start making progress right away,” he said.

Pointing out the existing inequities, the report says progress on sanitation has been hampered by inadequate investments in behaviour change campaigns, lack of affordable products for the poor, and social norms which accept or even encourage open defecation.

Although some 2.1 billion people have gained access to improved sanitation since 1990, the world has missed the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target by nearly 700 million people.

Today, only 68 per cent of the world’s population uses an improved sanitation facility – 9 percentage points below the MDG target of 77 per cent.

Still, the world has made “spectacular progress” in water, Jeffrey O’Malley, Director, Data, at UNICEF’s Research and Policy Division, told reporters Tuesday.

In 2015, 91 percent of the global population used an improved drinking water source, up from 76 percent in 1990, while 6.6 billion people have access to improved drinking water.

The total without access globally is now 663 million, almost a 100 million fewer than last year’s estimate, and the first time the number has fallen below 700 million.

As the MDGs expire this year, the goal on water has been met overall, but with wide gaps remaining, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The goal on sanitation, however, has failed dramatically. At present rates of progress it would take 300 years for everyone in Sub-Saharan Africa to get access to a sanitary toilet, said the report.

Tim Brewer, Policy Analyst on Monitoring and Accountability at the London-based WaterAid, told IPS the MDG goal on water was met largely because of those who were easiest to reach.

“The poorest are often still being left behind. What we need to do in the new U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), now under negotiation, is to make sure that progress for the poorest is made the headline figure.”

“We cannot have another situation where we appear to be succeeding because the situation of the comparatively wealthy has improved, even as millions of people are still falling ill from dirty water or from environments that are contaminated with faeces,” he noted.

Brewer said monitoring is key: “We need to measure basic access for the poor, as well as measuring other indicators such as whether water is safe and affordable, and whether wastewater is safely treated.”

“This is the only way to make sure we reach everyone, everywhere by 2030 and hold governments accountable to their promises,” he argued.

In countries like Japan and South Korea, according to published reports, sanitation is far beyond a basic necessity: it has the trappings of luxury with piped in music, automatic flushing, and in some cases, scenic window views — even while millions in developing nations defecate openly in nearby rural jungles or on rail tracks (with their bowel movements apparently being coordinated with train schedules, according to a New York Times report.)

The practice of open defecation is also linked to a higher risk of stunting – or chronic malnutrition – which affects 161 million children worldwide, leaving them with irreversible physical and cognitive damage.

“To benefit human health it is vital to further accelerate progress on sanitation, particularly in rural and underserved areas,” says Dr Maria Neira, Director of the WHO Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health.

Asked if it would be realistic for sanitation goals to be rolled into the proposed SDGs with a target date of 2030, UNICEF’s Wijesekera told IPS that an even more ambitious sanitation target is suggested for the new SDG agenda – to eliminate open defecation and achieve universal access to sanitation.

“I think the goal of achieving universal access to sanitation by 2030 is possible, but only if we start focusing on the poorest and most vulnerable right now (rather than waiting for the wealthiest to gain access first, as has historically been the case).”

He said: “We can also learn from the successes of the past 25 years, and especially the last 15. A number of countries have made rapid gains during the MDG era.’

For example, he pointed out, Ethiopia has reduced open defecation rates by 64 percentage points and Thailand has closed the gap in access between the richest and the poorest.

This shows what is possible when countries recognise the importance of tackling inequalities in access to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), thus unlocking wider benefits in health, nutrition, education and economic productivity, he noted.

Asked how the sanitation problem can be resolved, Wijesekera told IPS: “Sanitation is not rocket science; most developed countries take it for granted.”

“But our experience on the ground in developing countries shows that it is not just a question of governments investing money and technology. It is also about changing ordinary people’s attitudes and behaviours, and this takes time,” he said.

Sanitation can best be addressed by countries establishing and investing in people and systems at a local level to change people’s behaviours, and to get the private sector engaged in providing affordable and good quality products and services for the poor.

This, he said, needs to be led by countries themselves, and donors, international organisations and the private sector all have a role in providing financing and expertise.

He also said there is a growing awareness of the importance of sanitation as a foundation for human and economic development.

World leaders – from the U.N. Secretary-General, to the President of the World Bank, to the Prime Minister of India – are all talking about it.

“We need to translate this high level political support into action in order for all people to have access to what is theirs as a human right: clean drinking water and adequate sanitation,” said Wijesekera.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Sanitation infrastructure in India’s sprawling slums remains a massive challenge. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

By Neeraj Jain
NEW DELHI, Feb 24 2015 (IPS)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to action for a 100 percent Open Defecation Free (ODF) India by 2019 was announced as part of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) or Clean India Campaign last year.

With 60 percent of all those practising open defecation globally residing in India, this task is particularly crucial, yet also challenging.We need to think how we are going to engage and influence the behaviour of such a massive audience. It probably requires the most ambitious behaviour change campaign ever attempted in the history of any nation.

Inadequate waste management leads to the contamination of water sources, contributing to diarrhoeal diseases that claim the lives of 186,000 children every single year.

With nowhere safe to go to the toilet, women and girls are often put in a vulnerable position as they seek somewhere private to relieve themselves.

A lack of adequate sanitation also has a substantial impact on economic development, with money repeatedly being lost due to workers being sick or taking time off to care for sick family members, not to mention the cost of medical treatment.

So is the 2019 target actually achievable?

It may sound like a tall order but we won’t know until we try. We need to look at the ways to make it work – implement this seemingly ambitious plan in an effective manner to make the target achievable. Not just admit defeat before we start.

The recent pace of the activities under the SBM suggests that India would become clean by 2070. To achieve the target around 50,000 toilets need to be built every day, without compromising on quality.

So it’s high time that we stop focussing on the problems and start discussing possible solutions.

With this in mind, WaterAid India organised an India WASH Summit in New Delhi last week. It was the first of its kind and was aimed at devising solutions to India’s sanitation crisis and shaping future collaboration to achieve Swachh Bharat’s ambitious target of a toilet for every household by Oct. 2, 2019. 

This landmark event, organised in partnership with the Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation and Ministry of Urban Development, brought together the government, the private sector and civil society groups working to make clean India a reality.

The summit concluded with the creation of a concrete set of recommendations to be shared with the government of India to help in the effective implementation of the SBM across a number of themes including behaviour, equity and inclusion, gender, water security, institutional transformation, technology, research, and convergence of nutrition, health and education.

Collaboration emerged as a key theme at the summit, both within the sector as well as with organisations focussing on nutrition, health and education. Participants at the summit stressed the importance of capacity building and the need for effective monitoring.

It was agreed that sanitation should be acknowledged as a basic human right. To ensure success in getting sanitation for all, programmes need to be equitable and inclusive and should include behaviour change at its core.

Previous initiatives have taught us that just building toilets is not enough. To stimulate demand for toilets, hygiene education and collective initiatives are key.

We need to think how we are going to engage and influence the behaviour of such a massive audience. It probably requires the most ambitious behaviour change campaign ever attempted in the history of any nation.

The overall budget of the programme (rural as well as urban) as estimated by the government is almost Rs. 3 lakh crores (50 billion dollars).

I believe that answers to all hurdles identified above do exist but the entire WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) sector need to come together to find the most suitable answers as well as the most effective ways to implement it, in record time.

WaterAid has been working in the WASH sector in India since 1986 and is committed to supporting the government of India in realising the ambitious but much needed goal of making India open defecation free by Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary in October 2019.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Water is supplied by the military in Old Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: UN Photo/Kibae Park

By Dilip Surkar
AHMEDABAD, India, Sep 20 2014 (IPS)

It was a dramatic moment at the United Nations when it voted in 2010 to affirm water and sanitation as a human right.

Then Bolivian ambassador to the U.N., Pablo Solon, shocked the silent auditorium with a devastating reminder of the consequences a lack of access to safe, available and affordable water and sanitation have on human life – every 21 seconds, a child dies of a water-borne disease.The shameful events in Detroit, when thousands of the poorest inhabitants of the U.S. city were disconnected from their water supply this summer after being unable to pay their bills, brought the failure to realise the human right to water and sanitation into sharp relief.

This key moment at the U.N. – which hosts its General Assembly next week – marked the beginning of a diplomatic process through which the need for states to progressively realise the human right to water and sanitation, and all the standards and principles it entails, became an obligation for member states.

Now, four years on, governments around the world are coming together to finalise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will guide official development policy and processes for the next 15 years.

However, while there has been recognition of the centrality of water and sanitation to development through its standalone goal, there has been a palpable reluctance from many – though not all – governments to firmly state the realisation of the human right to water and sanitation as a SDG target.

Mirroring this at national level, there is an equally distinct lack of movement in the recognition of the right in constitutions and legislation. And in many cases where it is recognised, a few bright spots aside, rights have failed to become a reality.

Rights vs reality

In the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector, the framework of access has come to dominate. For those unfamiliar with the human right and its legal obligations, it is a perfectly reasonable call – for everyone to have access to water and sanitation.

But everyone has a human right to water and sanitation that is not only accessible, but universally available, safe and affordable and in addition to this for sanitation, acceptable.

Reducing our demand for water and sanitation to access alone hinders the fulfilment of these all important standards of the human right, while it also puts out of focus human rights principles such as opposing discrimination, ensuring participation, equality and accountability, among others.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) reduced our monitoring of water to access alone, with no measure for its sustainability. While having a tap would be a step up for many millions, as anyone living without water as a daily reality could attest, a tap, standpipe or other means of accessing water does not mean water is consistently available from it, nor that it is safe or affordable.

By the measure of access alone, the MDG on water has already been achieved. Figures from the World Health Organisation and Unicef’s Joint Monitoring Programme suggest that 748 million people now lack access to water – between 1990 and 2012, 2.3 billion people gained access to ‘improved drinking water sources’.

But, as research has demonstrated, increase the complexity of this measure to safe water and the figure balloons: some 1.8 billion people are thought to lack access to safe water.

The shameful events in Detroit, when thousands of the poorest inhabitants of the U.S. city were disconnected from their water supply this summer after being unable to pay their bills, brought the failure to realise the human right to water and sanitation into sharp relief: in the world’s richest economy, people can be left, essentially, to die, removed in a discriminatory manner from the sustenance of life-giving water.

“Disconnections due to non-payment are only permissible if it can be shown that the resident is able to pay but is not paying,” said U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque, who was joined by the rapporteurs on housing and extreme poverty in condemning the USA.

“In other words, when there is genuine inability to pay, human rights simply forbids disconnections.”

In Kenya, one of the very few countries where the human right to water and sanitation is embedded in the constitution, rights remain far from reality, with patterns visible across the world replicated in microcosm – the poor pay more for their water than the rich.

“I call upon the authorities to take immediate measures to enforce and monitor the official tariffs for water kiosks. This is crucial to correct the systematic pattern of the poor paying much more for water from kiosks than the rich for water from pipes,”said de Albuquerque.

“The rights to water and sanitation should not remain a dream for so many. These rights are recognised in the Kenyan Constitution itself,” she went on.

What is to be done?

At End Water Poverty, the world’s biggest water and sanitation coalition with more than 275 members, we decided at the beginning of the year to reframe our “Keep Your Promises” campaign to focus on the human right to water and sanitation.

This means that at a national level we will support our members in demanding that the right is recognised, and where it is already recognised, that it is realised.

This means all the standards and principles of the right are adhered to; it means that in situations of water scarcity the state must meet people’s needs, whether for drinking, cooking, washing or hygiene, as a first priority; and it means governments must use the maximum available resources in a non-discriminatory manner to realise the right.

At an international level, it means the SDGs must adopt the realisation of the right as a target. Do governments intend to regress on international human rights law they created? Do they not want provision of water and sanitation to be framed by non-discrimination? Or for sanitation to be framed by privacy, dignity and cultural acceptability?

As then U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said last year on the SDG process, development efforts must be directed to the realisation of human rights:

“This has been so central to the demands of people from all regions that we can now confidently assert that the extent to which it is reflected in the new framework, will in large measure, determine its illegitimacy.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

An open drainage ditch in Ankorondrano-Andranomahery. Madagascar receives just 0.5 dollars per person per year for WASH programmes . Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS

By Michelle Tullo
WASHINGTON, Apr 12 2014 (IPS)

World leaders on Friday discussed plans to expand sustainable access for water, sanitation and hygiene, focusing in particular on how to reach those in remote rural areas and slums where development projects have been slow to penetrate.

The meeting, which took place amidst the semi-annual gatherings here of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) could be the world’s largest ever to take place on the issue."Ministers are much happier to talk and support a hydro project, like a huge dam, and are less happy to open up a public latrine." -- Darren Saywell

Water, sanitation and hygiene, collectively known as WASH, constitute a key development metric, yet sanitation in particular has seen some of the poorest improvements in recent years.

Participants at Friday’s summit included U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake as well as dozens of government ministers and civil society leaders.

“Today 2.5 billion people do not have access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene,” the World Bank’s Kim said Friday. “This results in 400 million missed school days, and girls and women are more likely to drop out because they lack toilets in schools or are at risk of assault.”

Kim said that this worldwide lack of access results in some 260 billion dollars in annual economic losses – costs that are significant on a country-to-country basis.

In Niger, Kim said, these losses account for around 2.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) every year. In India the figure is even higher – around 6.4 percent of GDP.

Friday’s summit was convened by UNICEF.

“UNICEF’s mandate is to protect the rights of children and make sure they achieve their full potential. WASH is critical to what we hope for children to achieve, as well as to their health,” Sanjay Wijesekera, associate director of programmes for UNICEF, told IPS.

“Every day, 1400 children die from diarrhoea due to poor WASH. In addition, 165 million children suffer from stunted growth, and WASH is a contributory factor because clean water is needed to absorb nutrients properly.”

Over 40 countries came to the meeting to share their commitments to improving WASH.

“Many countries have already shown that progress can be made,” Wijesekera said. “Ethiopia, for example, halved those without access to water from 92 percent in 1990 to 36 percent in 2012, and equitably across the country.”

A water kiosk in Blantyre, Malawi. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

Good investment

Indeed, the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for water halved the proportion of people without access to improved sources of water five years ahead of schedule. Yet the goal to improve access to quality sanitation facilities was one of the worst performing MDGs.

In order to get sanitation on track, a global partnership was created called Sanitation and Water for All (SWA), made up of over 90 developing country governments, donors, civil society organisations and other development partners.

“Sanitation as a subject is a complicated process … You have different providers and actors involved at the delivery of the service,” Darren Saywell, the SWA vice-chair, told IPS.

“NGOs are good with convening communities and community action plans. The private sector is needed to respond and provide supply of goods when demand is created. Government needs to help regulate and move the different leaders in the creation of markets.”

In addition, sanitation and hygiene are not topics that can gain easy political traction.

“It is not seen as something to garner much political support,” Saywell says. “Ministers are much happier to talk and support a hydro project, like a huge dam, and are less happy to open up a public latrine.”

Saywell says that an important part of SWA’s work is to demonstrate that investing in WASH is a good economic return.

“Every dollar invested in sanitation brings a return of roughly five dollars,” he says. “That’s sexy!”

Sustainable investments

Friday’s summit covered three main issues: discussing the WASH agenda for post-2015 (when the current MDGs expire), tackling inequality in WASH, and determining how these actions will be sustainable.

“We would like the sector to the set the course for achieving universal access by 2030,” Henry Northover, the global head of policy at WaterAid, a key NGO participant, told IPS.

Although the meeting did not set the post-2015 global development goals for WASH, it was meant to call public attention to the importance of these related goals and ways of achieving them.

“Donors and developing country governments need to stop seeing sanitation as an outcome of development, but rather as an indispensable driver of poverty reduction,” Northover said.

WaterAid recently published a report on inequality in WASH access, Bridging the Divide. The study looks at the imbalances in aid targeting and notes that, for instance, Jordan receives 850 dollars per person per year for WASH while Madagascar, which has considerably worse conditions, receives just 0.5 dollars per person per year.

The report says this imbalance in aid targeting is due to “geographical or strategic interests, historical links with former colonies, and domestic policy reasons”. Northover added to this list, noting that “donors are reluctant to invest in fragile states.”

“In India, despite spectacular levels of growth over the past 10 years, we have seen barely any progress in the poorest areas in terms of gaining access to sanitation,” he continued. “Regarding inequality, we are talking both in terms of wealth and gender: the task falls to women and girls to fetch water, they cannot publicly defecate, and have security risks.”

Others see funding allocation as only an initial step.

“Shift the money to the poorer countries, and then, so what?” John Sauer, of the non-profit Water for People, asked IPS. “The challenge is then the capacity to spend that money and absorb it into district governments, the ones with the legal purview to make sure the water and sanitation issues get addressed.”

Friday’s meeting also shared plans on how to use existing resources better, once investments are made.

“If there is one water pump, it will break down pretty quickly,” WaterAid’s Northover said. “This often requires some level of institutional capability for financial management.”

Countries also described their commitments to make sanitation sustainable. The Dutch government, for instance, introduced a clause in some of its WASH agreements that any related foreign assistance must function for at least a decade. East Asian countries like Vietnam and Mongolia are creating investment packages that also help to rehabilitate and maintain existing WASH systems.

“This is probably one of the biggest meetings on WASH possibly ever, and what we mustn’t forget is that the 40 or 50 countries coming are making a commitment to do very tangible things that are measurable, UNICEF’s Wijesekera told IPS. “That bodes well for achieving longer-term goals of achieving universal access and equality.”

By Ish Mafundikwa
Harare, Dec 17 2013 (IPS)

Ish Mafundikwa reports from Harare that five years after the deadly cholera outbreak that hit Zimbabwe, the country is still struggling to upgrade its water and sanitation infrastructure.

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