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South Asian People’s Perspective on Sanitation: Synthesis Review
Summary
South Asia is a region of great contrast. On one hand there are promising GDP growth rates, but these are countered by poor human development, poverty and disease, with hundreds of millions of men, women and children with no access to sanitation. There is political commitment to change, with new policies and investment for public services, but there are also significant barriers to enabling people to live safe and dignified daily lives. The biggest, and often overlooked, problems are exclusion and inequality. Millions of poor and marginalised people continue to be denied their basic rights, and as development initiatives concentrate on numbers, the excluded are marginalised still further.
It is now time to move from talk to action; to ensure that economic growth translates into human development and wellbeing for the people of South Asia.
This review is the result of a series of open-ended interviews and focus group discussions with a cross section of poor and marginalised social groups across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. We asked people about their
sanitation and hygiene practices, the status of sanitation infrastructure and facilities in their communities, and their reflections on why interventions and projects in their settlements had succeeded or failed.
About the publisher
WaterAid is an international charity working in 26 countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific region. WaterAid’s mission is to overcome poverty by enabling the world's poorest people to gain access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education. www.wateraid.org
The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) is an international organization that works to improve access to sustainable sanitation, hygiene and water for all people. It does so by enhancing collaboration among sector agencies and professionals who are working to provide sanitation to the 2.6 billion people without a clean, safe toilet, and the 884 million people without affordable, clean drinking water close at hand. WSSCC is part of the UN system and contributes to development through knowledge management, advocacy, communications, and the implementation of a sanitation financing facility. WSSCC supports coalitions in more than 30 countries, and has a broad membership base and a small Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland. www.wsscc.org
Freshwater Action Network (FAN) is a major network of civil society organizations (CSOs) implementing and influencing water and sanitation policy and practice with members from all around the world. FAN has been building national, regional and global alliances and is currently functioning as a consortium of CSO networks with focal points in Africa, South Asia, Mexico, Central and South America. www.freshwateraction.net
