Rationale for the Global Sanitation Fund

1.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe water supply, but 2.6 billion people lack access to safe sanitation. While the lack of access to sanitation and hygiene facilities adversely impacts on health, the environment and on access to education, the world is badly off-track to achieve the sanitation MDG target. 

The lack of access to safe water supply, sanitation and hygiene is the third most significant risk factor for poor health in developing countries with high mortality rates. Diarrhoea alone is responsible for the deaths of 1.8 million people every year, 90% of whom are children under five. However, it is recognized that improved water quality reduces childhood diarrhoea by 15-20%, while better hygiene through hand washing and safe food handling reduces it by 35% and safe disposal of children’s faeces leads to a reduction of nearly 40%.

Global Sanitation Fund's impact on poverty

The negative impact of the lack of sanitation coverage on world health and poverty has been widely documented in publications such as WSSCC's "It's the Big Issue" (2002). In response to this wide appeal for action, the Global Sanitation Fund is expected to impact on poverty in a variety of ways:

• Access to sustainable, safe sanitation and changes in hygiene behaviour will result in better health for the users and communities
• Better health means more time spent on income generating activities and lower health expenses
• Children will miss fewer school days due to sickness, and access to school sanitation facilities will keep more children, especially girls, in school. Improved schooling will enhance their income generating potential as adults
• Safe sanitation will give women better health, dignity and privacy
• Improved sanitation will counter pollution and faecal contamination and will improve the immediate environment of the household and community.

Global Sanitation Fund's contribution to progress towards the MDGs

Therefore, the Global Sanitation Fund will contribute to progress towards the Millenium Development Goals, especially those to reduce child mortality -Goal 4- and to ensure environmental sustainability -Goal 7. Targets to be achieved by 2015 for these goals include reducing by two-thirds the under-five mortality rate and halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to basic sanitation. Improved sanitation and hygiene will also contribute towards other goals including eradication of extreme poverty and hunger -Goal 1, achievement of universal primary education -Goal 2, and promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women -Goal 3.

There is currently no global financing mechanism for sanitation and sector leaders have identified this gap. They feel that existing financing mechanisms for sanitation are not sufficient to meet the needs of unserved people, as opposed to those for water and sanitation, which still devote the vast majority of their resources to water.

The Global Sanitation Fund is a response to WSSCC's original mandate

From 2007, WSSCC has therefore activated the part of its original General Assembly mandate that encourages it to support other organizations' implementation work. It does this by giving grants from a pooled global fund (named Global Sanitation Fund) to selected competent organizations in particular countries. WSSCC is well placed to host such a fund because of its ongoing work in networking and knowledge management and in advocacy. The three activities complement each other and make a coherent whole, whose impact and effectiveness is greater than the sum of its three parts.

The strong link between the Global Sanitation Fund-supported work and WSSCC's networking and advocacy work is a fundamental characteristic of the Global Sanitation Fund as a whole. WSSCC also has a longstanding reputation for multi-stakeholder participation, coalition building and people-centred approaches and applies those principles to all aspects of its work including the Global Sanitation Fund. As a component of the UN system, hosted by WHO, WSSCC provides a multilateral funding mechanism within a well-established framework for results-based management, financial controls and development policy.

Advocacy efforts over the last decade, including those of WSSCC, have succeeded in bringing greater attention to sanitation issues; this trend should continue. Donors – both the bilateral agencies that have traditionally financed sanitation and new financial supporters from civil society and the private sector – are increasingly keen to support work in sanitation and hygiene. WSSCC's Global Sanitation Fund gives all those types of donors an efficient and cost-effective financing mechanism to help the neediest people in accordance with the sanitation policies of the governments of those countries.

• Read an introduction to the Global Sanitation Fund (pdf) by Jon Lane, Executive Director of WSSCC