Resources / Programme Launching Ceremony 22 March 2011

Summary

Eighty two per cent of Cambodia’s 14 million people live in rural areas. Of these 11.5 million people, a similar percentage – 80% – lack access to improved sanitation.

One of the challenges in Cambodia is that its rural population is very tradition-bound. Open defecation is commonly accepted, with consistent use of latrines only expected in public areas, and only among adults. However, recent efforts to introduce new sanitation promotion and improved hygiene practices into communities have resulted in emerging indications of behaviour change.

With the Global Sanitation Fund programme, launched on March 22, 2011, in Phnom Penh, WSSCC committed $5.09 million over the next five years to support sanitation improvement for poor people in Cambodia. The focus of the programme, officially called The Cambodia Rural Sanitation and Hygiene Improvement Programme (CR-SHIP), is predominantly rural communities in the plains and coastal regions of the country. The programme targets 200,000 households (roughly one million people) in 2,000 villages, 250 rural communes and 53 districts that have less than 50% sanitation coverage at the household level.