Welcome to the forefront of humanitarian action where the Water and Sanitation Hygiene (WASH) sector plays a pivotal role in emergency responses. At the heart of our efforts lies the mission to provide affected populations with essential clean water and sanitation services – fundamental pillars for preserving dignity and sustaining life.
As the challenges of humanitarian crises evolve, so too must our response strategies. The escalating number of affected individuals, coupled with the prolonged duration, scale, and complexity of crises, necessitates urgent adaptation and acceleration of our efforts. This imperative for action is underscored by findings from Doctors Without Borders' insightful "Where is everyone?" report of 2014. The report shed light on critical shortcomings in humanitarian aid, highlighting deficiencies in technical capacities, prioritization, and internal processes. In light of these findings, the WASH sector has rallied to enhance its response capabilities. Recognizing the urgency of the situation, WASH actors are committed to accelerating their efforts, strengthening technical capacities, improving prioritization mechanisms, and addressing internal dysfunctions. Our goal is clear: to deliver timely, equitable, and effective assistance to vulnerable populations in crisis settings. |
In October 2017, the Inter-Agencies WASH Group (IAWG) -an informal group of the largest WASH organizations- and the Global WASH Cluster (GWC) invited key WASH stakeholders and agencies to meet and identify challenges and opportunities for the sector. They discussed new approaches to save additional lives, to achieve targeted public and environmental health outcomes, and to create synergies between acute emergencies, humanitarian crises, and long-term development. This launched several studies, such as the emergency gap one and the WASH sector capacity study led by the Urgence-Rehabilitation-Development Group (URD).
The latest presented their findings to the GWC's annual meeting in 2019 which led to the identification of five key recommendations, endorsed by fifteen of the largest organizations involved in the WASH sector:
- Recommendation #1: Reposition WASH as a core sector for survival and protection
- Recommendation #2: Quality WASH responses should be timely and efficient and reach the most inaccessible and difficult places
- Recommendation #3: WASH responses are predictable and effective only when robust protocols are in place
- Recommendation #4: The predictability of the WASH response depends on the timeliness and flexibility of financial resources
- Recommendation #5: It is essential to build synergies between acute humanitarian situations, protracted contexts and development
The outcome of this process provided the basis for the strategic framework for the WASH Road Map. It articulates how, through collective commitments and strategic engagement, the humanitarian capacity of the WASH sector ought to be enhanced.The document was finalized in early 2020, outlining three functional pillars and three operational areas. A year later, in January 2021, the fifteen Emergency Directors formally approved the Road Map, confirming their commitment to contribute to and support the implementation plan through four working groups divided into a total of 16 innovative initiatives, each led by one or two of the partner agencies.
Since then, over fifteen organisations have officially joined the collective, actively contributing through their expertise to the WASH Road Map vision: By 2025, the humanitarian WASH sector will have the capacity and resources to deliver qualitative responses at scale, anywhere and anytime. |
In 2023 took place the Mid-Term Review of the WASH RoadMap meant to review the first three years of the collective, its initiatives, and their progress, to dive into the ways initiatives, working groups and other governance entities collaborated, to question the failure and success of certain initiatives, and much more. After dozens of surveys and interviews, the external consultant leading the Mid-Term Review submitted her final report with many great recommendations and levers of action to make sure the WASH RoadMap action achieves its goals and that no initiative is left behind during the two years to come. This involves a complete redefinition of the governance model of the collective, a transformed monitoring tool, the merging of certain initiatives that showed great synergies, and other tangible changes to put in place sooner rather than later.