WASHwatch: helping to hold governments to account

WASHwatch: helping to hold governments to account on their commitments to the fundamental foundations of health.

WASHwatch—an online platform for monitoring government policy commitments and budgets for water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) was launched by WaterAid yesterday at World Water Week in Stockholm.

Why?  Because in 2011, 2.6 billion people world-wide STILL do not have access to sanitation; 884 million people have no safe drinking water source; and shockingly, the resulting diarrhoeal diseases kill 4,000 children every day.

WASHwatch.org: a new advocacy resource for civil society

A new online advocacy tool for the WASH sector is being developed. The website www.WASHwatch.org aims to make it easy for civil society to monitor their governments’ political declarations on WASH, such as eThekwini in Africa and SACOSAN in South Asia. Civil society organisations (CSOs) can also upload government budget data to compare how countries are prioritising the sector.

WASHwatch.org is currently under development and only accessible to registered users. Pages for Nepal and Nigeria have the most complete information so far. A public version will be available in the near future.

WASHwatch.org aims to make advocacy easier in the following ways:

• Easy comparison of different countries’ progress against political commitments like eThekwini and SACOSAN.
• Easy tracking of government budgets for WASH, and quick comparison to neighbouring countries
• Easy printing of the data to take to a meeting

Source: Serena O’Sullivan, End Water Poverty blog, 27 May 2010