Published on: 22/11/2011
Government commitments and responsibilities to deliver on entitlements will only translate into action when they are embedded at the institutional level. Civil society could play a stronger role in safeguarding sanitation rights in some countries. This is also true of the media. Ravi Narayanan, Chair International Steering Committee, Water Integrity Network (WIN), presided over the discussion on the complementary roles of government, service providers, civil society and the media in ensuring good governance. The session concluded that more people would like to see democratisation, human rights and rules of justice included in governance.
Finance for equity is significant in delivering sanitation outcomes for 100% of a community. A blend of financial instruments is almost always needed, combining public and private sources of funds to deliver sanitation and hygiene at scale. Sophie Tremolet, Chair of the WSSCC Global Sanitation Fund (GSF) Advisory Committee, facilitated an open discussion about the basket of different financing mechanisms required to deliver sanitation for all in a community. This combination of community led approaches, targeted subsidies, microcredit, cash transfers and community financing was discussed by a number of speakers, who also indicated that much more work is needed to identify the optimum blend of financial instruments in different countries at different times in the sanitation and hygiene transformation.
