Further to the Violence, Gender and WASH Toolkit that was released in June 2014, WaterAid and its collaborators on the project are offering a one day training event on Violence, Gender and WASH in London on the 6 March. The training will provide an introduction to the subject and will cover examples from development and humanitarian contexts.
To make universal health coverage (UHC) truly universal we need an approach which places gender and power at the centre of our analysis. This means we need a discussion about who is included, how health is defined, what coverage entails and whether equity is ensured. To celebrate Universal Health Coverage Day RinGs has put together a list of ten arguments for why gender should be a central focus within UHC.
Urban sanitation is becoming an emerging priority in the WASH sector, partly due to the realisation that it has not been given enough attention in the past. For one thing, because the Millennium Development Goals targeted sanitation coverage (people having access to latrines) and cities are doing much better than rural areas in this respect.
It’s my 5th WEDC conference! This year the conference is in Hanoi, Vietnam co-hosted with the National University of Civil Engineering. WEDC Conference is a key international meeting attended by WASH policy and programme staff, academics, activists and experts. The papers will be available on-line shortly (www.wedc-knowledge.lboro.ac.uk) but in anticipation, here are some thoughts from the conference about the research and practice presented.
I have just had two remarkable weeks in India with the National Rural Livelihoods Mission. This is a national movement of, so far, 2.4 million women’s self-help groups (SHGs). Each has about 10 members. Then there are Village Organisations of SHGs and Federations above them. I was there to help explore whether these SHGs and their organisations could take a lead in the drive for rural sanitation. This involved field visits in Telangana (formerly part of Andhra Pradesh) and Bihar, and three brainstorming workshops, the last one at national level in Delhi, convened by the World Bank whic
