Water, sanitation and hygiene
Every child should have equal access to water, sanitation and hygiene.
Challenges
The Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), Climate and Environment Programme Component, titled “Every Child Uses Safe and Equitable WASH Services,” is dedicated to ensuring that children, particularly in rural and peri-urban areas, have access to climate-resilient water, sanitation, and hygiene services in their communities, schools, and health centers by 2027. The key focus of this program is to reduce diseases related to poor WASH, create a safe and clean environment, especially during the crucial first 1,000 days of a child’s life and lead effective child-focused sustainability and climate change action plans to protect children from climate and environmental risks.
With 40% of girls spending over 30 minutes just fetching water, the clock on their future keeps ticking away. Lack of adequate hygiene services and protection against violence and early pregnancies often leads to high drop-out rates.
But the threats are not just socio-cultural; they're environmental too. Nearly 350,000 children under 18 are at high risk of riverine flooding, and a concerning 6.6 million are exposed to diseases like malaria, measles, cholera, rift valley fever, and even Ebola, according to the Children’s Climate Risk Index 2023 for Burundi.
Solutions
The WASH program aligns with the national plans and priorities as well as UNICEF's regional and global strategies. It aims to provide sustainable WASH services at both community and institutional levels, catering to both development and humanitarian contexts.
The outcomes of this program are expected to contribute significantly to the reduction of mortality and malnutrition in children under five towards the fulfillment of the rights to good health and nutrition, education, protection and clean water and sanitation in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and accelerated progress towards SDGs and other national priorities, including across multiple sectors of health, education, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), climate and environment. It also aims to improve school attendance and the well-being of schoolchildren by providing access to WASH services and menstrual hygiene management, including those with disabilities.
The key outputs of this program involve (i) scaling up the community approach to total sanitation, including safely managed sanitation, promoting WASH in institutions (Health care facilities and schools), engaging communities and frontline workers in social and behavior change on hygiene promotion and healthy environment at Household, community and health care facility level. ; (ii) implementing climate-resilient water and sanitation services in underserved communities with an emphasis on the special needs of children with disabilities and girls including menstrual hygiene management; (iii) strengthening Government-led systems that build community resilience and enable affordable, equitable and sustainable WASH services; engaging governments on a sector-wide approach, including sector coordination and WASH local governance; Strengthening monitoring and evaluation systems; implementing early warning systems for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation; promoting Humanitarian-Development Nexus approach; and escalating cross-cutting programme strategy that analyzes and addresses the impact of climate on youth and children in both development and humanitarian contexts in a multi-sectoral approach.
The program also contributes to Early Childhood Development (ECD) by promoting a healthy environment and sustainable WASH services at communities and institutions level as part of the integrated multi sectoral ECD package. It promotes an integrated approach to community engagement for essential family practices, including safe and equitable water, sanitation, and hygiene services.
Resources
Available publications, surveys, reports will be added in this section
