Rural Sanitation Programming in Challenging Contexts: Principles, Guiding Questions and Recommendations

If the world is to achieve universal coverage of safely managed sanitation services by 2030, governments and supporting partners must operate at scale, expanding services for the majority, alongside adapting approaches to tackle the barriers faced in challenging contexts.

Progress has been made on increasing rural sanitation services using standardized programmatic approaches such as market-based sanitation, community-led and financial approaches however challenges remain ensuring no one is left behind, especially those living in challenging contexts. There are currently limited practical resources on how to implement in these contexts at the speed and scale required.

This document provides guiding principles, key considerations and suggestions for planning, implementing, monitoring, evaluating and learning (MEL) and adaptive management within rural sanitation programmes in areas, communities and households, where ’standard’ rural sanitation programming approaches have not worked. It also includes ideas on advocacy efforts which will likely be needed.

It draws on an initial scoping study, a review of additional programme guidance and reports, academic papers and national policies and 11 case studies capturing experiences and lessons learnt from different challenging contexts around the world.

Annex 1: Rural Sanitation Programming in Challenging Contexts: Additional Examples

This document accompanies ‘Rural Sanitation Programming in Challenging Contexts: Principles, Guiding Questions and Recommendations’. It provides additional practical examples of activities designed to improve sanitation access in challenging contexts from a range of different organisations working across varying challenging contexts. The examples presented here are from Bangladesh, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Malawi, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, South Sudan, Tanzania and Vanuatu.