Call for Information and Participation: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene and Gender Based Violence

WaterAid is creating a practitioner’s best practice resource to help reduce gender based violence (GBV) related to sanitation, hygiene and water (WASH) in development, humanitarian and transitional contexts. The team is interested to be in contact with any organisation or individual who has material or experience to contribute to the resource; and/or may be interested to co-publish the outputs. The research is being funded by the SHARE Consortium.

The research team are keen to hear from anyone who is interested to contribute to the resource by:

• Identifying what information / elements would be particularly useful to your organisation
• Sharing case studies of GBV and WASH; from experience, or from existing documentation
•  Sharing examples of good practice on programming in relation to GBV and WASH, or examples of programming from other sectors and GBV which could be transferrable to WASH programming or the training of sector professionals
•  Sharing good practice on ways to respond to incidences of GBV in low-income contexts, including any examples of processes where WASH professionals have engaged with protection or GBV professionals

To contribute to the research, for further information or to receive the final outputs of the research please contact (copying in both email addresses):

• Sarah House – sjhouse.majisafi@gmail.com
•  Sue Cavill – gbv@wateraid.org

Related web site: WaterAid – Gender

Sanitation and nutrition

In the scramble for attention in post-2015 development agenda discussions, WaterAid and the SHARE programme are highlighting the role of WASH in combating malnutrition. “A successful global effort to tackle under-nutrition must include WASH” is the headline in their new briefing note.

Mentioned in the note, and of special interest, is the forthcoming Cochrane review on “Interventions to improve water quality and supply, sanitation and hygiene practices, and their effects on the nutritional status of children” (DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD009382).

In the wake of the WaterAid/SHARE briefing note, a new World Bank report on sanitation and stunting [1] is ”getting a lot of attention from our nutrition colleagues”, says Eddy Perez of the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) in an email.

Fifth Emergency Environmental Health Forum, London, UK, 17-19 December 2012

The focus of forum is the Public Health Promotion (PHP) aspect of water and sanitation programmes. Presentations on this theme address topics such as new technologies and hygiene promotion, menstrual hygiene management, metrics for assessing the impact of hygiene promotion activities and Community Led Total Sanitation in the emergency environment.

The forum is convened by the SHARE Research Consortium and sponsored by Oxfam, IFRC, ICRC, International Rescue Committee, ACF, MSF and UNICEF.

The forum, which is being held on 17-18 December will be followed by a separate one day event on 19 December organised by the Hygiene Promotion Forum on hand washing. Participants will share examples of hardware solutions used in the field for hand washing and best practices on promotion and social marketing.

To register for both events go to: 5eehforum.eventbrite.com/

Public Library of Science Medicine series on water and sanitation sends wake up call to international health community

Four papers, which will be officially released on 16 November 2010 in PLoS Medicine – the flagship medical journal of the open access publisher Public Library of Science – highlight how sanitation and water, along with better hygiene are the “forgotten foundations of health”.

The first article by Jamie Bartram and Sandy Cairncross argues that the massive burden of ill health associated with poor hygiene, sanitation, and water supply demands more attention from health professionals and policymakers.

The second article by Paul Hunter and colleagues argue that much more effort is needed to improve access to safe and sustainable water supplies.

The entire series will be accessible on 16 November 2010 at:  http://www.ploscollections.org/watersanitation