"Influencing and Engaging Government in Sanitation"

For more information, please click here to visit the discussion on the SuSanA Forum

The full video recording of May 17th 2017 can be found here.

Content

In working to address SDG6 there is increasing need to understand the different barriers to gaining governments commitment to sanitation and ensuring investment of resources to achieve targets. While it is clear that access to water and sanitation is a human right stating this is not enough to get the commitment from governments, especially in areas where funds are limited and there are competing priorities. By understanding government officials position, drivers and challenges it is possible to better engage and influence government and increase uptake in prioritising sanitation services.

SuSanA facilitated a panel discussion between three organisations that have been doing just this:

The World Toilet Organisation (WTO) has been working to influence and incentivise governments since its inception in 2001. They have been instrumental in establishing World Toilet Day as an official event in the UN calendar and using this as a driver for getting governments to prioritise sanitation investment around the world.

WaterAid have been active in advocacy and policy for a number for years, they recently worked with a number of other organisations in the sector to release user-friendly guidance aimed at local government officials to help them to better understand access to sanitation as a human right and therefore prioritise sanitation investment. You can read more about it here.

BRAC is the world’s largest development organisation that operates across 11 countries. They have achieved massive improvements in WASH in Bangladesh by working with the government to support programmes and understand the importance of investing in sanitation.

The panel discussion aims to understand what has worked for these three organisations in influencing government to prioritise sanitation and to address questions from SuSanA members along this topic. We are inviting SuSanA members to post their questions to the panel here, we will also be sharing short biographies of the panellists in the days leading up to the discussion.