Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Cluster. Afghanistan

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Cluster Afghanistan Strategy Paper 2011 Kabul - December 2010 Afghanistan WASH Cluster 1

OVERARCHING STRATEGY The WASH cluster agencies in Afghanistan recognize the chronic nature of many of the crisis that occur and how these affect a country with widespread and acute poverty. Good development should incorporate effective disaster management (DM) practices, which should include disaster risk reduction, preparedness and recovery activities that strengthen resilience to future disasters. Therefore a key strategy for the WASH cluster is to integrate its humanitarian coordination and response activities within the ongoing programme and structures that exist to further WASH development. In this respect the WASH cluster agencies will actively seek to work with functioning Government capacity at the provincial level and influence DM policy at the national level through demonstration of good practices. When crises occur, the WASH cluster agencies will intervene to address risk of disease outbreak, focusing specifically on diarrhoea risk reduction. This implies focus on the key interventions known to be most effective; hand washing with soap, safe management of excreta, household water quality and safe storage. The traditional nature of society where purdah is observed very strictly, means girls and women face major problems where displacement from their homes occurs as they are not able to have the same levels of privacy that they enjoy at home. This means that meeting women s and girls needs for privacy and dignity must be of the highest importance for WASH Cluster agency responses. It is therefore expected that WASH cluster agency programmes are developed and implemented with clear gender analysis and with involvement of women and girls, as well as men and boys, in all aspects of programme design. The poverty and extremely difficult terrain of Afghanistan means that the highest premium must be put on cost effective solutions that can be sustained with minimal input from external support. Emergency response programmes must therefore ensure that responses that require high cost support and solutions be kept to a minimum. WASH cluster agencies will therefore respond in the most cost effective, appropriate, i.e. low use of external resources, way possible and phase out more expensive short term emergency measures as soon as feasible. Focus on key interventions to reduce diarrhoea, i.e. soap purchase, excreta management and household level water treatment; all supported by hygiene promotion will support this strategy. Consistent with the above, early recovery initiatives will be undertaken and built into emergency programme design where it is known that affected populations are able to return to their homes, i.e. when floods, drought or earthquakes occur. While not a key feature of an immediate emergency response, the importance of raising awareness and changing attitudes to hygiene issues is one of the major WASH challenges both in development and emergency responses. In a country with very traditional attitudes to the role of women, combined with chronic poverty and faced with multiple crises, the obstacles to changing attitudes are enormous. Working with children as powerful agents for change is therefore one of the key interventions for longer term and sustained changes in hygiene attitudes. Therefore WASH cluster agencies will be encouraged to provide hygiene awareness training and resources to support this to children at temporary learning places and to schools in early recovery programming. 2

FOCUS FOR 2011 ONWARDS The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Cluster (WASH) Cluster in Afghanistan has made good progress throughout 2010. The mechanism is functioning well at National level with full participation from a range of Non-Governmental (NGO), Inter-Governmental and Governmental participants. There has also been a strong emphasis on rolling the WASH Cluster out to all regions of Afghanistan. The aim of the regional roll-out was to offer potential regional cluster participants the options to have a cluster at regional level, these were proposed to be established in the same geographical structure as the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) regions (see bellow map ). The WASH Cluster has now been rolled out in seven of the eight UNAMA regions, with security restrictions meaning the Southern Region roll-out was not possible in 2010 and maybe undertaken in 2011. Afghanistan continues to remain a complex emergency with a range of natural hazards and increased insecurity, therefore, the presence, expansion and strengthening of the WASH Cluster is recognised as valuable by all stakeholders. This strategic focus section aims to detail some of the strategic elements which the WASH Cluster could follow during 2011. These strategic areas of focus require more intense efforts in 2011 to get work to a particular level where it becomes possible to maintain momentum with much less input and so becomes part of an ongoing programme of work. Throughout these areas of strategic focus, careful consideration will need to be given to ensuring there is reach to the sub national level, i.e. regional level. This requires that consideration be given to a number of activities such as; document translation to Dari and Pashto, assisting local organizations understand how to work within and understand coordination mechanisms and applying for funds; to assist with document access where internet and other facilities are not easily available. 3

Strategic Focus One: Build stronger linkages with key coordination mechanisms As other Clusters begin to roll out in the regions, the WASH cluster should continue to ensure its own work is situated fully within the wider context of other clusters /sectors and the coordination mechanisms that are key to achieving this. Clearly from an overall humanitarian perspective, the WASH cluster has to continue to be present at the intercluster level mechanism and possibly HCT. In addition the Afghan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA) is now developing a good presence in most regions and has been present in Cluster roll-outs and WASH Inter-Agency Contingency Planning workshops throughout 2010. WASH Cluster Contingency Planning should increasingly be integrated with contingency planning and disaster management activities of other stakeholders including the 2010 conflict contingency planning undertaken by UNHCR and the on-going work by ANDMA to achieve the goals of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2012... Bi lateral linkages with other key clusters will be (re)established with a focus on health, nutrition, education, shelter and protection cluster as a priority. Similarly coordination WASH cluster presence is required in mechanisms that focus on pre and post crisis phases, i.e. Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) as part of good development programming, and Early Recovery Network (ERN) which aims to lead humanitarian work back into good development programming. There should be strong co-ordination between the WASH Cluster and Early Recovery Network to ensure that Early Recovery is given consideration in all WASH Cluster emergency activities, ANDMA can also support in this capacity. This can be best provided by ensuring that early recovery consultation is provided to the WASH cluster, so early recovery is part of WASH cluster strategy and response, rather than the cluster generating a separate early recovery strategy. Strategic Focus Two: Enhancing Sub-National WASH coordination mechanisms Excellent progress has been made throughout 2009 and 2010 to role the Cluster approach out to Sub-national (based on UNAMA Regions) level. The roll-out of a WASH Cluster for the one remaining region (Southern Kandahar) should be conducted, if security permitting, during 2011. Due to access there is also need for few provincial WASH clusters at the remote areas of the country. This decentralization of the WASH Cluster is extremely beneficial for the National WASH Cluster as a whole. Not only does it increase co-ordination right to the point of field implementation, but it also increases the resilience of the National WASH Cluster, which should be considered as a major driver to the process. The sporadic security incidents may continue to occur throughout the country in 2011; however the increased resilience that regional clusters gives means that security incidents in one region will not impact upon the activities of other regional cluster activities. These sub national WASH coordination mechanisms will continue to build links to Provincial Government mechanisms and will focus on information collection and dissemination via meetings, phone calls, internet, and e-mail as one key means to generate coordination at the regional level. They will also serve to share agreed policy, standards, and guidance generated at the national level. It will be critical for these mechanisms to bring in and communicate with national and sub national NGOs and therefore, address issues such as language, other than English, explain terminology and systems unfamiliar to sub national actors recognizing that there may be a lack of internet connectivity, etc. 4

Strategic Focus Three: Sharing baseline/assessment/monitoring data and capacity In any emergency response, data collection and its subsequent transformation to information and ultimately knowledge is key to a timely and effective response. Baseline data could be gathered using existing surveys that feed into the UNICEF/WHO Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) that produces data for progress against MDGs as these are already widely agreed upon and used by Government. However, it is recognized that JMP data need to be set alongside data from other sources and supplemented with more contextual details. Discussions will need to occur to agree what is required. However it should be stressed that focus in 2011 should be on gathering existing data, not setting up comprehensive systems that will take time and money. Humanitarian assessment and monitoring is more complex to address as there has not been national level agreement on what key WASH indicators should be used. The Global WASH Cluster has produced a number of tools in order to allow a holistic approach through a comprehensive system, with data captured in the so called Survey Tool which consists of assessment and monitoring formats. This tool is designed for adaptation to the local context through selection of key issues/indicators from a menu of options. However, experience from elsewhere in the region shows that getting agreement on tools in principle and arranging capacity resource to use these is complex and takes a couple of years at least to achieve. As an interim step WASH cluster will focus on facilitating better sharing of assessment information and identifying resources to collate and synthesize the variety of assessment information. In 2011 WASH cluster will seek to use and adapt global tools where assessment information from other sources is not available. Information management capacity will therefore be required to bring together information from a multitude of potential sources and assist in processing this information. It is important that Information Managers capacity is identified and available for support to WASH cluster coordinators. In 2010 a brief training on Initial Rapid Assessment (IRA) tool was given to the National WASH Cluster partners. This training should be rolled out to the regional WASH Clusters throughout 2011. In the longer term, further Information Management preparedness measures can be undertaken, including training of information managers and users on other tools such as Compressive Assessment and Monitoring Tool Strategic Focus Four: Mapping and enhancing capacity to respond The National WASH Cluster has already completed some initial work on Capacity Mapping. However, given the size of the humanitarian operation in Afghanistan, and relative insecurity in some of the Provinces it has to date not been possible to gain a quantitative understanding of capacity at regional level. A further dedicated programme of Capacity Mapping would give a more detailed picture of which resources and skills are currently held by WASH Cluster participants within each region, and thus also highlight which resources and skills are not available in the region (capacity gaps). Upon establishing the capacity gaps, additional resources or training could be provided before an emergency to ensure any adverse events could be managed more effectively and efficiently. The Global WASH Cluster has developed a number of tools to assist national WASH Clusters with Capacity Mapping. However these tools are designed to be used at national level and this process of capacity mapping takes many months to complete correctly at national level and thus has been shown to be overly detailed and inapplicable at regional/ provincial level. Therefore, it is considered best to undertake the formal capacity mapping task at national level and a much simpler version of the tool should be developed within country for use at regional level. The education cluster has developed a simplified version of their global tool and this could provide guidance to the WASH cluster on the level of 5

simplicity required. Given capacity mapping works overlaps with who, what, where (3Ws) information collection linkages should be made to the 3Ws form and process (something which the education cluster tool does not do) to ensure agencies are only required to fill in just one template. A particular focus of this mapping will be to identify gaps in known capacity in insecure areas. In these there will be a need to look for new partnerships, possibly with non traditional actors and with NGOs at the provincial level who may not have featured in the national level WASH cluster previously. It should also be recognized that some of these actors may not want to be visible at the national level for security reasons, which in turn implies a level of information sensitivity and delegation of authority to these actors at the provincial level. The capacity mapping should also yield information about what capacity building activities are required, with capacity building plans put in place for the winter months of late 2011 and early 2012. Strategic Focus Five: Establish and maintain regional Preparedness Planning Afghanistan is prone to a number of natural hazards and still faces insecurity, so Preparedness Planning would ensure a much improved, co-ordinated and comprehensive emergency response should a major incident occur. Excellent progress has been made with Contingency Planning at National and Regional Level throughout 2009 and 2010. Regional Contingency Planning remains to be completed in the southern region. Therefore, it is suggested that throughout 2011 a focus on Preparedness Planning is maintained at National and Regional level. This should begin again as soon as security permits in the southern region or through remote working with those already present in the region. Strategic Focus Six: Analysis of patterns of funding flows and access limitations Insecurity associated with targeting of humanitarian actors has become something of a common problem faced in Afghanistan due to association in the minds of the belligerents of humanitarian agencies with the parties to the conflict. It will be important to advocate for new partnerships and ways of working that allow humanitarian assistance to those in need while not jeopardizing those providing assistance. There will be a need to understand where there are perceived to be acute gaps in assistance and how these can be addressed by alternative means. Furthermore funding flows for crisis response work are increasingly passing through international military forces, etc, leaving civil society and humanitarian agencies unable to implement a programme to address critical needs and unable to project an impartial position. There is a need to undertake further specific analysis on the consequences of funding flows, and the use of non traditional actors to undertake work more typically associated with civil society and humanitarian agencies. This should underpin OCHA s work leading in the area of humanitarian advocacy. This work should seek to achieve a reversal of some of the funding allocations made by donors who are parties to the conflict. Strategic Focus Seven: Agreeing common technical and programme quality standards Work has already been undertaken to include SPHERE as the key reference point in the Government s new Rural WASH policy document. With the next edition of SPHERE due to be published in early 2011 this will form the key reference document for humanitarian response for WASH agencies and the WASH Cluster. SPHERE of course includes all the 6

relevant guidance on how to deal with cross cutting issues such as gender, age, HIV/AIDs, disability and thus will form the key reference document to ensure cross cutting issues are mainstreamed in all responses. Detailed work on emergency latrines designs, agreeing key hygiene messages and hygiene kit contents has been completed while emergency bathing facilities design is in progress. It will be critical to bring the outstanding work to completion and ensure that all key policy work and standards are widely disseminated and key documents translated so that actors at sub national level are aware. Furthermore with the new edition of SPHERE ready to be launched in early 2011, it will be important to undertake training and orientation on this during the middle part of 2011. 7