Menstrual hygiene management in schools: midway progress update on the “MHM in Ten” 2014–2024 global agenda

Menstrual hygiene management in schools: midway progress update on the “MHM in Ten” 2014–2024 global agenda. Health Research Policy and Systems, January 2021.

Progress has been made in recent years to bring attention to the challenges faced by school-aged girls around managing menstruation in educational settings that lack adequate physical environments and social support in low- and middle-income countries.

To enable more synergistic and sustained progress on addressing menstruation-related needs while in school, an effort was undertaken in 2014 to map out a vision, priorities, and a ten-year agenda for transforming girls’ experiences, referred to as Menstrual Hygiene Management in Ten (MHM in Ten).

The overarching vision is that girls have the information, support, and enabling school environment for managing menstruation with dignity, safety and comfort by 2024. This requires improved research evidence and translation for impactful national level policies.

As 2019 marked the midway point, we assessed progress made on the five key priorities, and remaining work to be done, through global outreach to the growing network of academics, non-governmental organizations, advocates, social entrepreneurs, United Nations agencies, donors, and national governments.

This paper delineates the key insights to inform and support the growing MHM commitment globally to maximize progress to reach our vision by 2024. Corresponding to the five priorities, we found that (priority 1) the evidence base for MHM in schools has strengthened considerably, (priority 2) global guidelines for MHM in schools have yet to be created, and (priority 3) numerous evidence-based advocacy platforms have emerged to support MHM efforts.

We also identified (priority 4) a growing engagement, responsibility, and ownership of MHM in schools among governments globally, and that although MHM is beginning to be integrated into country-level education systems (priority 5), resources are lacking.

Overall, progress is being made against identified priorities. We provide recommendations for advancing the MHM in Ten agenda. This includes continued building of the evidence, and expanding the number of countries with national level policies and the requisite funding and capacity to truly transform schools for all students and teachers who menstruate.

WASH for Women and Girls Fact Sheet. USAID, December 2020.

WASH for Women and Girls Fact Sheet. USAID, December 2020.

Through Water for the World, USAID increases access to sustainable water and sanitation services, promotes key hygiene behaviors, and enhances the effective management of water resources in developing countries.

USAID also elevates the status of women and girls to empower them as decision-makers and professionals in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector so they can lead the transformation of water and sanitation services in their own communities and countries.

Decolonising the WASH sector

Being true to #BlackLivesMatter. Report of an IRC Global Talk

Gay Village, Montreal. Credit: Martin Reisch/Unsplash

“The problem isn’t men, it’s patriarchy.
The problem isn’t white people, it’s white supremacy.
The problem isn’t straight people, it’s homophobia.
Recognize systems of oppression before letting individual defensiveness paralyze you from dismantling them”. (Ruchika Tulshyan, founder of inclusion strategy firm Candour)

This is not a quote you would expect to hear from an opening speaker in your usual WASH sector webinar, but the title of the IRC Global Talk on 16 July was anything but usual: “Decolonising WASH sector knowledge and decolonising systems thinking”.

On 18 June 2020, IRC posted a message from our CEO on Black Lives Matter with a commitment to the global struggle against racism. For this Global Talk, we found two, young undaunted voices to help IRC kickstart discussions on our commitments to #BlackLivesMatter. We asked them to elaborate on their recent provocative think pieces on decolonisation. First up was Euphresia Luseka, a WASH Governance Consultant from Kenya who wrote “Initiating De-colonization of WASH Sector Knowledge”, followed by the UK-based writer/facilitator and historian, Alara Adali who believes in “Decolonising systems thinking” for social change.

Sanitation Learning Hub launched

Following the start of a new four-year programme funded by Sida, the Institute of  Development Studies (IDS) launched the Sanitation Learning Hub website on 22 June 2020.

The website is divided into into three main sections:

Practical Support 

This section presents recommended approaches and practical tools to help sanitation and hygiene practitioners do their job well. It reflects our commitment to adaptable, ‘combinable’ and context-specific learning and sanitation approaches. Each approach page has an introduction recommended resources.

Current Thinking

Resources are divided by nine essential themes in this section. Each theme has an introduction, recommended resources, and sub-themes that get into more detail.

• Behaviour change
• Climate change
• Challenging contexts
• Gender
• Health
• Hygiene
• Leave No One Behind
• Monitoring, evaluation and learning
• Sustainability and safely-managed sanitation

Connect, Share, Learn

The desire to bring together sanitation and hygiene professionals is reflected here. You can find blogs, news, events in the sector and more information about workshops, including stories from participants of past workshops. You can also submit a blog in this section.

Watch this video introduction to the new website.

Brief: Mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 and menstrual health and hygiene – UNICEF

Brief: Mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 and menstrual health and hygiene. UNICEF, April 2020.

A summary of essential considerations to ensure continuation of MHH during the pandemic:

1. Ensure MHH supplies and WASH facilities are in place for healthcare workers and patients.
2. Mitigate the impact of lack of access to menstrual materials and WASH facilities by providing menstrual materials in NFI and food assistance for girls and women with limited movement or in camps or institutions.
3. Provide basic WASH facilities and services in communities, camps, and institutional settings.

All Women Need Equal Access to Water and Sanitation

All Women Need Equal Access to Water and Sanitation. by Pallavi Bharadwaj, Engineering for Change, March 9, 2020.

International Womens’ Day was recently celebrated worldwide, but many women and girls have little cause for celebration in at least one aspect of their lives. They have to walk miles each day to fetch potable water. This year #IWD2020’s theme was #EachforEqual.

Twenty-five years after adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), the UN-Women’s executive director reports that no country has achieved equality for women and girls.

No country has reached low inequality in human development without reducing the loss coming from gender inequality.

Inequality is evident in access to Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) related issues, too. Women and girls bear the brunt of spending unequal numbers of hours collecting water for their households and enduring physical and emotional injuries in doing so.

And despite those efforts, many are still unable to provide water security at a rate that is difficult to quantify, according to Sera Young, professor of anthropology and global health at Northwestern University.

Read the complete article.

Religion and Sanitation Practices – World Bank

Religion and Sanitation Practices. World Bank, January 2020.

Infant mortality among Hindus is higher than among Muslims in India, and religious differences in sanitation practices have been cited as a contributing factor.

To explore whether religion itself is associated with differences in sanitation practices, this study compares sanitation practices of Hindus and Muslims living in the same locations using three nationally-representative data sets from India.

Across all three data sets, the unconditional religion-specific gap in latrine ownership and latrine use declines by approximately two-thirds when conditioning on location characteristics or including location fixed effects.

Further, the estimates do not show evidence of religion-specific differences in other sanitation practices, such as handwashing or observed fecal material near homes.

Household sanitation practices vary substantially across areas of India, but religion itself has less direct influence when considering differences between Hindus and Muslims within the same location.

Health, safety and dignity of sanitation workers – WaterAid

Health, safety and dignity of sanitation workers. WaterAid, November 2019.

Sanitation workers provide an invaluable public service, vital to our daily lives and the environment. Yet they often work in conditions that expose them to the worst consequences of poor sanitation – debilitating infections, injuries, social stigma and even death – every day.

We have joined forces with the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization to shed light on this neglected issue. Our report is the most extensive global exploration of the topic to date.

In it we analyse the problems sanitation workers face – focusing on those emptying pits and tanks and maintaining sewers – and explore good practices around the world. We suggest areas of action to ensure sanitation workers: have their rights recognized; are supported to organize as a labour force; and have their working conditions improved and progressively formalized.

Read the complete article.

Incontinence and WASH Focusing on people in humanitarian and low- and middle-income contexts

Incontinence and WASH: Focusing on people in humanitarian and low- and middle-income contexts

Incontinence is the involuntary loss of urine and/or faeces

People of any gender, age or ability can experience incontinence: they cannot hold on to their urine and/or faeces (‘the involuntary loss of urine or faeces’), and need to manage their urine and/or faeces leaking out. Leakage can occur at any time, day or night (commonly referred to in children as ‘bedwetting’). Incontinence has a significant impact on the quality of life of life of those who experience it, and that of their family members and carers:

“The children (in Zaatari refugee camp, Jordon) are really suffering. The problem is that the mothers have been trying to cope for so long that basically they’ve given up. Night after night of urine and they can’t keep them clean. It’s soul-destroying (Venema, 2015)”

Members of an informal email group on incontinence in humanitarian and development settings* have identified a lack of acknowledgement and support for people with incontinence. In response the group has been developing tools and collating resources to enable development and humanitarian professionals to create a supportive environment for people in low- and middle-income countries to manage their incontinence hygienically, safely, in privacy and with dignity.

We have identified that anyone who experiences incontinence has increased water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) needs compared to the rest of the population. WASH-related tools and resources have been collated on this webpage to help improve the knowledge and practices of the WASH sector

Read the complete article.

July 16, 2019 – Webinar on Menstrual Hygiene Management in Emergencies Toolkit

July 16, 2019 Webinar on Menstrual Hygiene Management in Emergencies Toolkit

• Organized by Columbia University , International Rescue Committee (IRC)
• 12:00pm — 1:00pm

Please join us for a webinar on the Menstrual Hygiene Management in Emergencies Toolkit. Feel free to invite any colleagues who may be interested in this event!

Discussion topics include:

• Conducting a rapid MHM assessment
• Sector responsibilities on MHM (WASH, Protection, Shelter, Health, Education, Camp Management)
• Monitoring & evaluating MHM activities
• Key findings from ongoing implementation and research

Additional info and registration