The Steering Committee of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) took a landmark decision by approving WSSCC’s new 2021–2025 strategy, which paves the way for WSSCC to evolve into the Sanitation and Hygiene Fund, a scalable and global fund to effectively support the world’s poorest and most left behind in achieving the sanitation and hygiene-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs).
Today, ensuring access to adequate levels of sanitation and hygiene is more urgent than ever: lack of access to adequate sanitation and hygiene, including menstrual health and hygiene, stands as one of the greatest impediments to the achievement of many of the SDGs, leaving large number of people exposed to not only outbreaks or pandemics of infectious diseases, such as diarrheal diseases, cholera, Ebola and COVID-19, but also maternal and neonatal death, inadequate sexual and reproductive health, the spread of anti-microbial resistance, sepsis and malnutrition.
Women and girls are disproportionately affected by poor sanitation, hygiene, and menstrual health which negatively impact their safety and dignity from sanitation-related gender-based violence, mobility, freedom of choice, health and their access to employment, and social and economic power. Yet, at the current rate of progress, the Sustainable Development Goal target on sanitation and hygiene is projected to be only reached in the 22nd century.
What Does It Mean For India?
According to Dasra, around 23 million girls in India drop out of school each year because of lack of menstrual hygiene facilities, and many more miss schools whilst on their period. WSSCC is trying to end this problem in India. In 2019, WSSCC worked with the state governments of Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam to put in place guidelines and strategy for the convergence and coordination of Menstrual Health Management (MHM) programming between different line departments, including Water and Sanitation, Health, Education, and Women and Child Development, and the leveraging of funds for implementation.
815 master trainers were trained on MHM by the Geneva-based organisation at state and district level in 2019. WSSCC partnered with Global Interfaith Wash Alliance (GIWA) to harness the power of faith to tell a story and confront misinformation about menstruation. This has seen many highly influential faith leaders, male and female, to speak out about the rights of women and girls to menstrual health and hygiene and to tackle pervasive stigma across society.
During the Kumbh Mela, GIWA set up a “menstrual lab”—a physical tent amid faith camps and welcomed streams of curious pilgrims using life-size puppets and word of mouth. Over the course of 45 days, an estimated 90,000 pilgrims visited the lab to learn about menstrual health and hygiene, confronting their own taboos and beliefs.
Leaving No One Behind
With partners GIWA and FANSA in India, WSSCC has created a platform to elevate the voices of those left behind and inform the Voluntary National Reviews on SDGs progress. Providing a safe environment for people who are systematically denied opportunities and resources that are available to other members of the community (including water and sanitation service provision) because of their exclusion from social, economic, cultural and political life due to who they are, where they live or what they believe.
The Sanitation and Hygiene Fund therefore calls on global leaders, including national governments, to drastically scale up their investments in sanitation and hygiene in schools, health care centers and at the household level and to ensure the necessary innovation that supports better sanitation and hygiene.
WSSCC has already reached millions of people around the world with essential and often life-saving interventions in sanitation and hygiene. Building on WSSCC’s achievements and the support provided by its longstanding donors and partners, the Sanitation and Hygiene Fund will support eligible countries to access increased and catalytic financing to close the gaps in their national sanitation and hygiene strategies.
“Today, we recognize the need for a global approach, a transformative approach, and a long-term approach. With the Sanitation and Hygiene Fund, we are calling upon world leaders to help us fill a void in the international response to the sanitation, hygiene, and menstrual health crisis,” says Hind Khatib-Othman, Chair of WSSCC.
A section of this article has been published as a press release by WSSCC.