WSSCC at the World Water Week 2008
In 2008, the World Water Week in Stockholm had a special focus on sanitation within the general theme of Progress and Prospects on Water: for a Clean and Healthy World.
WSSCC took maximum advantage of the week to communicate about itself, its members and sanitation and hygiene issues. It participated in or arranged a number of sessions together with its partners and Executive Director Jon Lane moderated the High-Level Plenary Panel during the opening day. A side event on the Global Sanitation Fund was also organised, the WASH Media Awards ceremony was a great success and all week long a staffed exhibition stand seved as a clearinghouse for information and a recruitment centre for new members.
Please click here to see the programme of WSSCC's activities at the World Water Week.
Water and Sanitation Advocacy: How can we Convince You?
Co-convened with WaterAid, this seminar presented the two largest advocacy campaigns in the water and sanitation sector: "End Water Poverty" and the "Global WASH Campaign". It aimed at conveying success-stories and debating the dynamics of advocacy in the sector.
Mr. Steve Cockburn introduced the End Water Poverty Campaign (EWP) as a coalition of non-profit organisations strengthening the voice of civil society in 35 countries to influence their governments' WATSAN agenda. With the approach "from Local to Global", EWP aims at a global action plan for watsan, the development of national watsan plans, and a sound donor commitment, while focusing on the poor communities in low-income countries.
Ms. Saskia Castelein gave an overview of the WASH Campaign and its approaches on both global and national level. Launched in 2001 to advocate for a sanitation target in the MDGs, the campaign has been picked up by WSSCC's worldwide network and has resulted in a broad range of national level WASH advocacy activities. Examples were given of the WASH Campaigns in Madagascar and Ethiopia.
The "live"- stories came from Mr. Dounantié Dao from Mali and Mr. Umesh Pandey from Nepal. Mr. Dao gave an in depth overview of the EWP Campaign in Mali, where the coalition is communicating clear messages understood by all layers of the population. Besides the technical departments of various ministries, the president of the parliament and financial partners, the EWP targeted successfully the President of Mali. Mr. Dao stressed as immediate impact of the lobbying efforts the first steps taken towards a sanitation policy.
Mr. Pandey presented different activities under the umbrella of the Nepalese WASH Campaign: lobbying for a separate and increased budget line for sanitation, mobilisation of the media to create general awareness and increase the political will, in addition to substantial investments in communication and knowledge sharing through workshops, newsletters and other WASH publication materials.
Mr. Jon Lane opened the discussion by asking Mr. Sharma, Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works, how the WASH Campaign has influenced him as a top civil servant of the government of Nepal. Mr. Sharma stressed that changes are being made at top-level where the need for, and importance of, sanitation has been understood. However, the difficulties lie in the next steps, namely the implementation phases. Therefore, advocacy should not only target national level politicians, but also decision makers at local and district level.
The debate highlighted the importance of partnering with other sectors, for example with the human rights activists, to support access to water and sanitation to be recognised as a human right. Moderated by Mr. Oliver Cumming from WaterAid, it also raised topics as how to use campaigning to create demand and to support sanitation as a business, or as Jack Sim of the World Toilet Organisation put it, the need to design a Sanitation IKEA for poor people. The importance to sell sanitation not only as a technical issue but to translate it into emotional terms such as privacy and dignity, were echoed by various participants.
The so-called unreclaimed territory of "northern advocacy" was presented by George Yap, who elaborated on a recently created lobby group of 19 NGOs (SWAN Canada) to influence the Canadian Government on watsan issues. However, the tone of the discussion was that for campaigning in the watsan sector to be successful, one needs to engage with other sectors as is already happening in successful national level campaigns. Whereas the building of cross-sectoral alliances at the global level still remains very challenging.
To download the presentations from Ms. Saskia Castelein on the Global WASH Campaign, from Mr. Umesh Pandey on the WASH Campaign in Nepal, from Mr. Steve Cockburn on the End Water Poverty Campaign and from Mr. Dounantié Dao on the End Water Poverty Campaign in Mali please click here.
On the pictures, from top to bottom: Mr. Jon Lane moderating the High-Level Panel; Mr. Sharma, Mr. Umesh Pandey, Mr. Dounantié Dao, Ms. Saskia Castelein, Mr. Steve Cockburn and Mr. Jon Lane at the advocacy seminar; WSSCC stand.