Written evidence from WaterAid
WaterAid is an international NGO working in Rwanda
but not in DRC or Burundi. This response draws on WaterAid's experience
of working in Rwanda as well as other fragile and post-conflict
states such as Liberia and Sierra Leone.
WaterAid believes that ensuring the provision of
basic services—health, education, water and sanitation—is
self-evidently a public good but also underpins the legitimacy
and stability of nation states.
We have focussed on our response on the first two
broad questions of the enquiry rather than the last few questions
on our assessment of DFID's current programmes in fragile states.
The key development priorities DFID and other
Government Departments should be addressing in fragile and conflict-affected
states
People in conflict affected countries are twice as
likely to be undernourished or without safe access to water than
those in stable countries.[63]
Diarrhoea is now the biggest killer of children in sub-Saharan
Africa. Improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene form an
essential first step in human development and overcoming poverty.
Access to sanitation and water cannot be separated from progress
on other economic and human development issues. Without access
to sanitation and water, poor health and frequent illness lead
to lower productivity and lower income; sanitation and water are
drivers of development as well as outcomes of it. It is women
and girls that bear the greatest burden of water and sanitation
poverty either through heightened vulnerability to water and sanitation-related
diseases or through water fetching labour that typically can take
up two hours per day.
In order to deliver results in fragile states it
is crucial that the most neglected and off-track areas of development
are acted upon; including sanitation, which is now the most off-track
MDG in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is therefore essential that DFID
focuses its investment in fragile states within the water and
sanitation sector.
The most effective mechanisms for delivering aid,
and the role of DFID's focus on results in fragile and conflict
affected states
The available evidence[64]
has shown that the greatest progress in improving water and sanitation
access has been achieved by countries where:
— (a) the
water sector has carried out sector reforms and capacity building
within its sector institutions; and
— (b) aid
modalities have supported the development of country-led programs
in which a reformed sector has been embedded in core country systems.
For fragile and post conflict states the challenge
to achieving these two steps lies in breaking a vicious circle,
where government institutions are too weak to deliver leaving
donors to channel funding via NGOs and humanitarian agencies,
or through propped up units within ministries. Whilst these strategies
help in delivering the immediate objectives these practices risk
becoming entrenched continuing well into the post-reconstruction
and rehabilitation period and weakening the development of country-led
systems.
Four strategies have been identified[65]
that are consistent with building longer term sector performance
in fragile states and post-conflict:
— (a) build
on the strengths of fragile states—fragile states are not
necessarily fragile in all areas and that there may be significant
areas of strength to build on;
— (b) provide
sector leadership with examples of the transition to development—from
the various trajectories through which previously fragile states
have strengthened their sectors' performance;
— (c) initiate
an early dialogue between the line ministries responsible for
Water and Sanitation Services and those ministries managing core
country systems (finance, planning and local government); and
— (d) develop
and use the aid modalities that promote the linkages between the
Water and Sanitation Services sector and country systems and economy-wide
capacity.
The UK Government is a leading partner in the Sanitation
and Water for All (SWA) initiative, that is a global partnership
between developing countries, donors, multi-lateral agencies,
civil society and other development partners working together
to achieve universal and sustainable access to sanitation and
drinking water. The initiative has an immediate focus on achieving
the Millennium Development Goals in the most off-track countries,
which are in many cases fragile states. In these cases the SWA
will strengthen national sanitation and drinking water planning,
investments and accountability frameworks, that improve targeting
and the impact of resources to the sector. At a global level SWA
supports effective decision making and strengthened country led
systems by championing the principles of mutual accountability
of governments and donors. An early SWA pilot in Liberia has embedded
a Country Compact that sets out the domestic and international
activities, roles and responsibilities for strengthening the sector
and its "service delivery pathways". Rwanda is one of
the partner countries in the SWA.
With the UK Government's commitment to Sanitation
and Water for All and to increase the UK Government's ambition
on sanitation and water, these sectors should be high on DFID's
priorities when it comes to working in fragile states.
June 2011
63 World Bank Water and Sanitation Programme, report
from workshop on delivering water supply and sanitation in fragile
states, Nairobi, Kenya, 3-5 May 2011. And the Water and Sanitation
Programmes Country Status Overviews 2011. Back
64
Country Status Overviews. Back
65
WSP Fragile States seminar-Nairobi, May 2011. Back
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