IRC: Enhancing Livelihoods through Sanitation

Despite the importance of safe sanitation to health improvements, poverty alleviation and environmental protection, sanitation still has a low profile when compared to water supply. Sanitation is highly deficient in most poor regions of the world, and needs to be put on the agenda in a more challenging manner. It is significant, in this connection, to note that drinking water has had a far higher profile for many years, even though sustained access to clean water and sanitation are closely linked at institutional, policy and implementation levels.

This Thematic Overview Paper goes into the importance of safe sanitation for the livelihoods of poor families. It addresses what poor sanitation means for their resources, including their income and expenditure in cash and kind, and for the environments in which they live and work. While the focus is on the effects of sanitation on the livelihoods of the poor, this TOP also addresses how the livelihoods of the poor affect their potential to improve sanitation.

The paper is available to download from Reliefweb.

An earlier paper, published in June 2007, looks at the historical perspective and addresses different 'types' of sanitation, such as basic sanitation, environmental sanitation, and ecological sanitation. It goes on to explain the elements of a sanitation system and the different stakeholders involved. Approaches to technology choice are discussed and the TOP concludes with a number of relevant books, articles and papers, websites and contacts.

Tufts: Humanitarian Agenda 2015

This report summarizes the findings of the first phase of a major research project on the challenges and compromises that are likely to affect humanitarian action in the next decade.
The issues are organized and analyzed around four interrelated “petals”: the universality of humanitarianism, the implications of terrorism and counter-terrorism for humanitarian action, the search for coherence between humanitarian and political agendas, and the security of humanitarian personnel and the beneficiaries of humanitarian action.

Six case studies—Afghanistan, Burundi, Colombia, Liberia, northern Uganda and the Sudan—provide the basis for the analysis, conclusions and recommendations contained in this report. Additional case studies—Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Occupied Palestinian Territories— are planned as part of phase two of the research.

The approach is evidence-based. The focus is on local perceptions. Generic and country-specific findings are distilled through an inductive process involving interviews and focus group meetings at the community level aimed at eliciting perceptions of local people on the functioning of the humanitarian enterprise. Additional data was gathered through interviews with aid community staff and an electronic survey of headquarters personnel. Readers are encouraged to make their own assessments of the field data, which is available on the web.

The findings highlight the crisis of humanitarianism in the post-9/11 world. They show that action aimed at alleviating the suffering of the world’s most vulnerable has been for the most part incorporated into a northern political and security agenda.

Read more on the Tufts website.

Forced Migration Review: Humanitarian Reform, fulfilling its promise?

For those who believe in it, it’s about fixing things and improving on them. For the sceptics, it’s about changing things for the sake of change, or replacing one slightly dysfunctional system with another equally dysfunctional one. For those opposed to it, it’s about replacing systems that work (in spite of all their faults and weaknesses) with inappropriate ones that are bound to fail because they have been dreamt up by people in ivory towers who have little real understanding of the situation on the ground.

So it is with humanitarian reform: you have the believers, the sceptics and the opponents. Fortunately, the vast majority of humanitarian practitioners believe in the need for change and adaptation. They recognise the need to improve the way humanitarian organisations do business. They are all too aware of the continuing proliferation and sometimes fragmentation of humanitarian actors and the problems that arise when there is a lack of operational capacity, planning, predictability and coordination. They have seen what happens when some categories of people (such as the internally displaced) are not dealt with in a systematic way or when particular sectors receive inadequate attention. They are all painfully aware of the failings that we have seen in recent years in places like the Congo, Darfur, Liberia and northern Uganda.

The package of humanitarian reforms put forward by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC)1 in 2005 and 2006 is ambitious and far-reaching. It falls into three main areas: first, achieving more adequate, flexible and timely humanitarian financing; second, strengthening the ‘Humanitarian Coordinator’ system; and third, ensuring more systematic and predictable attention to all the main sectors of response, in what has come to be known as the ‘Cluster Approach’.2 Underpinning all this is the need to strengthen our interface with governments and to forge stronger partnerships amongst humanitarian actors – particularly between UN and non-UN actors.
As with any reform process, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So the question now is whether or not the reforms are working.

Available for download from the Forced Migration Review website.

Global WatSan Initiative Video - 'Partnership for Change'

The thanks of the Water & Sanitation Unit, Federation Health and Care Department to Zambia Red Cross Society and Owen Thomas of CNN who participated in the production of this DVD, and to all their GWSI partners.

Tufts: Report on Livelihoods and Human Security in Karamoja, Uganda

Angering Akuju--Survival and Suffering in Karamoja: A Report on Livelihoods and Human Security in the Karamoja Region of Uganda


Karamoja is the poorest and least developed region of Uganda. The population experiences chronic food insecurity, little access to basic services, the weakening of traditional livelihood systems, ongoing insecurity, human rights violations, and a near complete lack of law and order institutions. Armed raiding of livestock and associated loss of life and destruction of property are common and pervasive. Economic investment and development is minimal due to the threat of road ambushes and lack of transport and communication infrastructure. Attention to the region, however, on the part of national and international agencies, donors, and Ugandan legislators is growing. This field-based report provides an in-depth analysis of key aspects affecting livelihood strategies and human security in the region, as well as broad recommendations for local, national and international actors seeking to expand their knowledge, policies or programming in the Karamoja region.

This new report focuses on Moroto District of central Karamoja but also includes information based on extensive fieldwork conducted from 2005 to 2007 throughout Karamoja and in neighboring districts of Uganda, South Sudan, and Western Kenya. Research teams worked in settled villages and mobile cattle camps to collect information on livelihood strategies, protection threats, food security, marriage, inter-generational relations, education and health, armed raiding, and forced disarmament.

The report is available for download from the Tufts website.

FAO: The State of Food and Agriculture 2007

Despite unprecedented global economic growth, 1.1 billion people continue to live in extreme poverty and more than 850 million people suffer from chronic hunger while ecosystems are being threatened as never before. Poverty reduction, food security and environmental sustainability have all moved to the top of a crowded international agenda, as reflected in the Millennium Development Goals. At the same time, the close relationships among poverty, hunger and ecosystem degradation are becoming ever clearer. Most of the world's poor people live in rural areas, many of them in marginal environments, and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Agricultural development is therefore crucial for alleviating poverty on a large scale. Such development would also require that the natural resource base on which the poor depend for their livelihoods be preserved and enhanced.

The full report is available to download from Reliefweb.

Fascinating article on Resilience in Humanitarian Aid Workers from London South Bank University

Resilience is a psychological term used to describe the interrelationship between specific factors known to promote wellbeing and strength in individuals who are undergoing unusually stressful life conditions (Luthar, 2003). Variation in the way different people respond to all kinds of sources of stress can be ascribed to a) genetically inherited factors; b) previous childhood experiences shaping future behaviours; and c) other protective features. The present research study explored the interrelationship of specific protective factors related to the development of resilience, namely the social context surrounding the individual at the time of the traumatic event, his/her cognitive skills, and other biological and socio-demographic features. An excerpt from a summary of the findings appears below:

Low levels of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and burnout were found, and many participants were willing to go back to the field despite the difficulties encountered during deployment. Stress factors were mainly linked to the external environment (e.g. being in another country, work load, the nature of the assignment, external dangers), the organisation and its personnel, and participants’ negative perceptions and affects (e.g. psychological problems previous to field deployment).
As a result of their mission, female participants were more likely to experience positive changes in family relations than males, whereas male participants were more likely to experience negative changes in the way they perceived their future than their female counterparts. As far as age was concerned, younger participants were more likely to be physically healthier than older ones, but also experienced more mental burnout. Finally, a higher number of past missions was related to positive changes in the development of resilience.

Job satisfaction was described as a key component in motivating participants to perform their daily tasks with courage and strength, but also seemed to drive them towards the limits of physical and emotional exhaustion. Positive coping techniques such as active coping, reflection before engagement, accepting difficult situations, and maintaining low expectations, were key factors that allowed participants to develop more resilience. A significant number of participants, however, reported a good number of dysfunctional coping techniques, such as using alcohol and recreational drugs, which can be interpreted as self-destructive behaviours.

A summary of the research is available to download from Reliefweb.