Progress report for
Commitment for United Nations Water Action Agenda
Achievement at a glance
The UNICEF’s Game Plan to Reach Safely Managed Sanitation was developed and launched in 2022 to help governments achieve safely managed sanitation for their populations and meet the sanitation target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Game Plan has the vision of supporting one billion people gain access to safely managed sanitation through UNICEF direct and indirect support, and in collaboration with other partners.Several global, regional and country level events were organized to roll out the Game Plan and support its operationalization. Strategic partnerships and alliance were formed with other organizations to roll out the Game Plan which has contributed to shifting the sector discourse towards promoting sanitation systems strengthening for accelerating progress on safely managed sanitation.
The key deliverables and timeline for the Water Action Agenda commitments on the Game Plan include:
• 20 UNICEF country-level game plans established by 01 September 2025
• 137 UNICEF programme countries with national estimates for safely managed sanitation in 2026 by 01 September 2027
• 50 UNICEF country-level game plans established by 01 September 2028
• 1 billion more people reached with safely managed sanitation via UNICEF support by 01 September 2030.
Several initiatives have been put in place and implemented to accelerate safely managed sanitation for all using the Game Plan and the following are the progress made so far in achieving the planned target for this commitment:
Challenges faced in implementation
• High political will and commitments are critical for promoting enabling policy environment for accelerated progress on safely managed sanitation.• Stakeholder engagement/consultation in the policy review and development process is fundamental for increasing ownership across government institutions and non-governments stakeholders.
• Most countries do not have safely managed sanitation targets in their sector policy documents and there are inadequate knowledge and experience on safely managed sanitation definition, contextualization and services.
• Systems strengthening initiatives are best undertaken as a collaborative effort with other Development Partners for harmonization of approaches, collective ownership and increase potential for scale up. The ongoing partnerships with WaterAid, WHO and other partners through sharing of experiences and joint global advocacy is supporting more countries to shift to safely managed sanitation programming using the Game Plan.
• With sustained efforts, the shifts to sanitation systems strengthening approaches are gradually being observed in many countries. This will however require significant time to achieve the desired outcomes.
Next Steps
Bisi AgberemiBeneficiaries
Through the Game Plan, UNICEF supported strengthening sanitation governance systems, enhancing the capacity of sector partners, promoting innovative approaches, mobilizing financing and domestic funding, and strengthening national data systems for planning and decision making. All these interventions supported the required shift in UNICEF programming towards achieving the full ambition of SDG6.2 targets. While the focus is still on ensuring that everyone has access to at least basic sanitation services in development and humanitarian contexts, significant progress is being made on accelerating progress on safely managed sanitation by UNICEF.
Through UNICEF direct support, about 7 million people in over 27 countries were reached with safely managed sanitation services in 2023. An additional 3.4 million people were reached with safely managed sanitation through UNICEF indirect support of strengthening government systems for sanitation delivery in 17 countries.
Actions
With UNICEF support, the Game Plan is being rolled out in 5 countries (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Zambia) and strengthening government led systems for effective and sustainable delivery of safely managed sanitation services. The implementation of the Game Plan in these countries focuses on:• Strengthening the governance and policy environment for accelerating progress on safely managed sanitation. This involves review/update/development of national sanitation policies and strengthening the coordination, accountability and regulatory framework for safely managed sanitation in these countries. The sanitation policy, strategy and plan development processes in these countries have contributed significantly to raising the profile of sanitation, increase engagements of all relevant stakeholders in sanitation development, clarify coordination and accountability mechanisms for sanitation, advocate and mobilize for the shift to universal access to safely managed sanitation.
• Supporting government to develop national WASH Financing Strategy that includes safely managed sanitation and incorporates provisions for extending sanitation services to the poor and marginalized, and those in challenging conditions who require additional assistance to access safely managed sanitation.
• Strengthening government-led national data and information systems for better policy formulation, planning and decision making.
• Building inclusive human and institutional capacity development for better understanding of safely managed sanitation definition and contextualization for policy development and programming.
• Promoting innovative solutions that are robust, cost-effective and scalable to support addressing the challenges in scaling up services across the sanitation service chain.
In addition, strategic support was provided to Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Cameroon and Guinea Bissau to strengthen their sanitation policy environment with development/review/update of policies and strategies.
As part of the initiatives of scaling up the Game Plan roll out, UNICEF is collaborating with WHO to develop country roadmaps to achieve universal access to safely managed sanitation which will be finalized and rolled out later in 2024. UNICEF is also collaborating with WHO and other partners to organize a global sanitation summit in June 2024 with the main objectives of raising the profile of sanitation, promoting greater alignment among sector stakeholders to support actions on sanitation, and facilitate knowledge exchange and learning among countries. The outcome of the sanitation summit will further enhance better understanding of the countries on safely managed sanitation and adoption of the Game Plan by many countries for accelerating progress on safely managed sanitation.