Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene September 2018 Vol.13 No.4 | Page 33

Publications
Without good hygiene practices,
State of hygiene
in Southern Africa
such as toilet use, handwashing
with soap, water treatment, food
hygiene, and menstrual hygiene,
the benefits of other poverty
reduction strategies will be
undermined, and human dignity
will be compromised.
The State of Hygiene in
Southern Africa study was
commissioned to gather
evidence regarding: the status of
hygiene practice in the region;
the enabling environment and institutional arrangements
for the promotion of hygiene behavior change; and key
policy and programme bottlenecks for the prioritization
of hygiene.
Summary of key findings
August
2018
Harnessing a Rising Tide – A New Look at Water
and Gender
A rising tide of social, economic
and technological progress
has provided the world with
immense new opportunities.
This proverbial tide has raised
many boats, but has left others
behind. Individuals and groups
who belong to certain ethnicities,
religions, tribes, castes, races,
disability statuses, locations, or
sexual minorities have not been
lifted.
That’s why a new World Bank report “The Rising Tide:
A New Look at Water and Gender”provides a fresh
look at the relationship between water and gender. As
Senior Director of the World Bank Water Global Practice
Guangzhe Chen says: “We believe this report will help
those who want to advance social inclusion in water,
close gender gaps, and lift those who all too often are left
behind or left out. “
For the World Bank, water and gender equality is a vital
issue. The Sustainable Developments Goals provide
both an ambitious mandate and ambitious targets. A new
World Bank Gender Strategy raises the bar for our own
work. And the World Bank Water Global Practice have
recently launched a new partnership for water security and
sanitation.
The Rising Tide builds on a previous World Bank report
on social inclusion and tells us that water is an asset, a
service, and a space. That’s because water has distinct
economic as well as noneco¬nomic and nonmonetary
values. Some values are spiritual or social and the
underlying norms and practices that play out are often
deeply gendered. Informal institutions, taboos, rituals, and
norms all play a part in cement¬ing the status quo.
The Rising Tide shows how water often reflects, and even
reinforces, gender inequality. As the foreword of the
report explains: “(The report shows us that) water is an
arena where gender relations play out in ways that often
mirror inequalities between the sexes. And it examines
how norms and practices related to water often exacerbate
ingrained gender and other hierarchies.”
The global analysis and assessment of sanitation
and drinking-water (GLAAS)
The Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and
Drinking-Water (GLAAS)
reports on the capacity of
countries to make progress
towards the Millennium
Development Goals’ water
and sanitation targets and
on the effectiveness of
external support agencies to
facilitate this process. UN-
Water GLAAS has been
designed in response to the
need to reduce the reporting
burden and harmonize
different reporting mechanisms of UN-family Member
States. GLAAS also increases the comprehensiveness and
accountability of information on the drinking water and
sanitation sectors.
The objective of the UN-Water GLAAS report is to
monitor the inputs required to extend and sustain water,
sanitation and hygiene (WASH) systems and services. This
includes the components of the “enabling environment”:
documenting government policy and institutional
frameworks; the volume, sources and targeting of
investment; the sufficiency of human resources; priorities
and gaps w ith respect to external assistance; and the
influence of these factors on performance. A more
challenging secondary goal is to analyse the factors
associated with progress, or lack thereof, in order to
identify drivers and bottlenecks, to identify knowledge
gaps, to assess strengths and weaknesses, to identify
challenges, priorities and successes, and to facilitate
benchmarking across countries.
The UN-Water GLAAS is produced by the World Health
Organization (WHO) on behalf of UN-Water and is
published every two years.
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