“1.8 billion people and over three-quarters of the world’s extreme poor live in fragile contexts. In more than 40% of these countries, people are highly or extremely highly water vulnerable, and humanitarian crisis are more frequent, effecting more people and lasting longer. Just 1 in 10 fragile countries are on track to achieve universal access to basic sanitation, while coverage is decreasing in 9 countries.” [German WASH Network]
On top of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sectors in Eastern & Southern Africa (ESA) region are facing numerous challenges including natural disasters and water scarcity due to climate change. Growing evidence, shows that these challenges can be addressed through a more collaborative effort between the actors in the humanitarian, development and peace sectors.
On 2 March, Neil Cole, Executive Secretary of CABRI joined WASH stakeholders, practitioners, decision- and policy makers from ESA region for the Regional Exchange Forum of the Triple Nexus in Wash – Initiative on “Building WASH resilience and sustainability for the Eastern & Southern Africa region.” During a high-level roundtable on how to operationalise the WASH humanitarian - development - peace (Triple Nexus), Mr Cole emphasised on a key question: How can we optimise public investments in WASH services, while improving efficiency in the use of public funds? He elaborated on three main issues to consider when identifying sustainable financing strategies, namely, (1) planning WASH services in line with overall national objectives; (2) the costs of reaching national objectives beyond investments and (3) designing a financing strategy based on knowledge of financial flows, leveraging efficiency gains, and different resources funding.
Organised by the German WASH Network, the forum led by the region and for the region, aimed to facilitate cross-country learning and to identify potential solutions to achieve collective WASH outcomes across the humanitarian, development and peace sectors.
About the Triple Nexus in WASH – Initiative
In 2019, the German WASH Network together with the GWC, SWA, UNICEF and the IFRC convened the Event “Building Resilient WASH Systems in Fragile States”, which took place at UNHCR in Geneva. For the first time, development and humanitarian WASH actors met with equal participation. As a response to the results of the event, the GWC positioned the humanitarian-development nexus at the core of the humanitarian WASH Sector´s Road Map 2020-2025. Under the umbrella of the Road Map and in line with the SWA’s Strategic Framework 2020-2030, the German WASH Network, SWA, GWC and UNICEF have formed a partner consortium that has developed the initiative “3.5 Triple Nexus” based on the results of the Geneva event.