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19th Global WASH Cluster Meeting, 2nd and 3rd of April 2014Norwegian Church Aid, Oslo

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Action Points and SummaryNCA are pleased to have the opportunity to welcome you all and to host this meeting and have such an active

engagement in the Global WASH Cluster (GWC).

Acronyms AAP Accountability of Affected PopulationsCAR Central African RepublicCAST Cluster Advocacy and Support TeamCC Cluster Coordination/Cluster CoordinatorsCO Country OfficeGWC Global WASH ClusterIM Information ManagementIMO Information Management OfficersL3 Level 3 (decides level of response from the humanitarian community)NHWC National Humanitarian WASH CoordinationOCHA Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian AffairsSAG Strategic Advisory GroupSHA Strengthening Humanitarian ActionSOP Strategic Response PlanSOF Strategic Operating FrameworkTA Transformative AgendaWASH Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

Day One Action Points If you have been working in South Sudan and Syria, please approach Brian Majewski or Kurt Wilson

from Avenir Analytics in order to contribute to the evaluation of the response to recent L3s. Fill out Avenir Analytics GWC Meeting Feedback forms (can be found in the DropBox folder), and

contribute any additional qualitative information in person or in writing to Brian, Kurt or Leilia.

Day One Summary Update from CAST:

Recent L3s are evidence that the FST is delivering results. In the next year, we will begin to look at the Strategic Plan for 2016-2020. A Global Cluster Coordinators Group is now formed to assess what the approach should be in the face

of inter-agency processes. This is an important time for engagement with the Transformative Agenda.

Update from SAG Meeting: SAG Meeting key decisions: 10 Global Principles for the FST agreed and decision taken to push the

advocacy pillar in the coming months. Avenir Analytics, Evaluation of Recent L3 Emergencies: Avenir Analytics have produced preliminary findings from their research on the response to the recent

L3s and will be continuing with this project in the next weeks. The report will be distributed in May.

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Syria WASH Update: In 2014, work will focus on advocating for expansion of coordination efforts, scaling up support,

advocating for access of the UN and NGOs, maintaining public institutions and increasing in country contingency stock.

Latin America, Capacity Building Strategy: In 2014, work is being done to increase connections with REDLAC (regional) and FST is working to find

country focal points to help with the provision of tailored support. Integrating Development and emergency sectors for national cluster coordination:

National Humanitarian WASH Coordination (NHWC) is an attempt to increase national capacity and sustain the gains from humanitarian situations. This is part of the Strengthening Humanitarian Action (SHA) initiative in the Strategic Plan 2014 – 2017.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Case Study: strategy for the next five years is to work towards having government as Cluster lead. A capacity building programme is in place to lead to this, linking emergency and development work to support the government.

Ethiopia, Case Study: One WASH National Programme recently launched to bring all stakeholders under one umbrella with one plan, budget, reporting system, procurement system, and financial management system, chaired by a combination of governmental ministries and UNICEF. We need to transition towards a supportive role as Ethiopia becomes a middle-income country.

Composition and selection of WASH emergency stocks Few requests during the pilot for the WASH Cluster Modules so need to determine the demand and

how to pitch them. Prepositioning with partners is one solution.

Day 2 Key Action Points Please submit notes on current failures of the Transformative Agenda, and what should be doing

about it, to Leilia Dore (ldore@unicef.org). Dawn Porter from LSHTM would appreciate any support on sourcing evaluation reports and tools,

lessons learnt on WASH interventions and hygiene promotion, and WASH strategies on community focussed interventions. Please get in touch at d awn.tay l or@lshtm.ac.uk if you can help.

Please consider the need for scale up by your organisations in Myanmar.

Day 2 SummaryChallenges and Opportunities of the Transformative Agenda for WASH Cluster CoordinationIssues:

Partners are becoming increasingly excluded from inter-agency processes, to the detriment of decision making and accountability to affected populations (AAP).

Information management is designed to report upwards- needs to be restructured and put at the service of affected populations.

Opportunities: High level strategies haven’t taken us where we need to be so there is an increased receptiveness for

input. Need to simplify key processes and strategic guidance to make them comprehensible to COs Upward reporting demands to be reduced in favour of a population-focussed orientation.

Strategizing assessment, IM and monitoring needs in the WASH sector: possible ways forward The TA places new demands on IM. This is an opportunity to improve assessments and streamline IM.

Need to ensure that data gathered is useful, and analysed. Vicki O’Donnell looking into a simple tool to cover the IM cycle and to look at capacity building.

Mainstreaming Protection into WASH Target for 100% of WASH projects to be gender sensitive by 2015. There has been tangible process so

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far. Attempt to unify the demands on WASH projects in one core document. 4 commitments: assessment

and design, implementation, AAP and monitoring and evaluation. Progress of the OFDA Emergency Sanitation Project (ESP)

Interested in expanding partnerships and offering trialling services in addition to working with their current projects.

Latest Developments on Urban WASH Consultancy with Richard Luff to address the fact that Urban WASH is not in the Cluster Strategy.

Result will be a set of recommendations for the sector. Looking at how we link up with private service providers, how to capitalise on in-country experience,

and standards of service delivery. How to distil an evidence-based selection of best practices? A discussion around the systematic review of WASH intervention for Cholera Outbreak Responses

A review of current cholera guidelines. Research gaps identified as water supply, water household treatments, hygiene kits and hygiene promotion.

WASH RECORD: a real time evaluation of cholera outbreak responses to strengthen evidence base, inform policy and practice and inform revision of Sphere WASH standards.

Technical Support Service, Knowledge Point A forum where questions can be asked to an online community. Information is peer reviewed and

open source. There is an opportunity for WASH to join the body of other organisations already using Knowledge Point. www.KnowledgePoint.org Feedback welcome as to whether this meets WASH needs.

Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) Project Funding available for project proposals from DFID. WASH stream focuses on gap analysis. Holds open

innovation forums and accelerated innovation processes to address current issues. Update on Myanmar:

Deliberate attacks on the 26th and 27th of March on humanitarian workers and premises by Rakhine community. Workers have pulled back to Yangon.

Inter-communal violence between Muslim Rohingya’s and ethnic Rakhines.20th GWC Meeting:

Voted that it should be held in Dakar. This will be confirmed in the coming months.

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Day 1 Detailed Minutes from Discussions

Session 01: Update from CAST Paul Shanahan, CASTL3 Emergencies: 9/11/13 massive mobilisation to the Philippines. The WASH Cluster performed very well. The capacity of the FST was taken up very rapidly, and partners played a key role in strengthening surge support. 5/12/13 Situation in CAR worsened. Response was well executed, seeing as many were already deployed. By the time the L3 in South Sudan was mobilised, capacity was exhausted. Now, we are plugging the gaps, but the system is struggling. Has been a good learning opportunity, and we have seen evidence that the FST is bringing results. Reworking of the FST: since 2008, FST capacity to support national coordination has grown from 3 RRTs to the current team of 13 that includes RECAs and RATs. With the evidence of these large emergencies, now is the time to streamline and focus in light of the Transformative Agenda (TA). The incremental development of the team has led to groups with mandates; we are now looking at this holistically in terms of the current needs. This is an opportunity to capture efficiencies and strengthen performance. The risk is becoming to process heavy. 7 key functions identified: assessment, IM and analysis, quality assurance, coordination (focus on gap-filling), continuity, capacity building, preparedness. Next steps: A concept note will be circulated amongst SAG call for expressions of interest of the delivery of components of this team from all Partners detailed design raising funds and engagement of donors operation. Partnership: The engagement of members in delivering capacity is a particular strength, in terms of funding, management and response. An example of partnership at work. Current strategic plan: runs 2011 to 2015. Next year there will be a need to look at 2016-2020. Several items on the plan are lagging behind which haven’t shown much change in the past year:

Partners to play an active role in making the cluster effective, both at Head Quarters and in missions. Accountability to affected populations (AAP): has received some attention but needs considerable

additional focus. SAG, CAST and members have discussed taking a holistic approach that takes quality programming, cross cutting issues and AAP. Good programming should already be paying attention to these cross cutting issues. Quality should be assessed through the lens of the affected population.

Inter-Agency Processes: Global Cluster Coordinators group now formed with a commonality of view of how we should be moving forward. Three clear messages:

We are currently responding to demands from the centre, need to switch our focus towards national clusters and affected populations.

Cluster Coordinators will play a greater role in setting the agenda. Spontaneous tasking

The Transformative Agenda (TA): Global Cluster Coordinators should have played a much larger role, but increased engagement now is better than nothing. OCHA is increasing pressure to operationalize the TA. They deployed over 100 people to the Philippines, but didn’t produce visible results. OCHA now understands that they can’t force this through and there is more collaboration.

Session 2 Update on FST Management, Franck Bouvet and Georg NothelleFST Dashboard being circulated regularly as agreed. Shows data about support given. More than 4500 days of support provided in 20 countries by the FST, directly and remotely. 52% of this is direct, 12% remote, 14% global cluster support. WCARO has received the most support due to low levels of capacity in the region. This analysis is contributing to evidence based for the operational hubs proposed for the new FST structure.

Session 3 Presentations of the SAG Deliberations, Jean Lapegue

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Validating FST structure: we are facing more emergencies which will continue to increase. Want to be more supportive of national platforms which shouldn’t necessarily be coming from the global level. Global principles agreed upon yesterday: 1 Increasing national capacity, decreasing surge support. Development of operational hubs in high risk countries in partnership with UNICEF. There are academics present supporting capacity building also.2 FST will intervene on a demand based approach, national appropriation of the FST3 Accountability remaining in the hands of CAST and SAG4 Increasing assessment expertise5 National capacity building for preparedness and response6 Having decentralised operational hubs (regional).7 Effectiveness and flexibility to reflect the magnitude of needs8 Partners remaining as the principle vehicle for implementation9 Preparedness in line with Early Warning Early Action report10 Priorities set by SAG and operationalized by CAST11 Efficiency and efficiency

Advocacy: decision to push this pillar. Yesterday, decision taken for 6 month project on advocacy in 2014. Identifying key topics, supporting platforms, and running a session on operational advocacy at the 20th GWC Meeting.

Session 4Avenir Analytics: Lessons Learnt on Operational Support to National Humanitarian WASH Coordination Platform, preliminary findings Ben Allen (ACF UK), Brian Majewski (Avenir)

Objective of this project is to gain evidence of the results achieved by the FST in the recent L3 emergencies to provide recommendations to the plans for 2015-16. Focus on Philippines, CAR, South Sudan and Syria. Initial findings:

References in survey responses to WASH cluster being one of the strongest overall, and having the strongest surge mechanism in place. No significant overall weaknesses, but there are opportunities for improvement.

Alignment of CAST and FST to national coordination platforms and IASC principles is good. Challenges when there are simultaneous high level emergencies to meet the staffing requirements indicated through the TA. A reality check is required, and no cluster can afford to maintain the capacity required. Deactivation is a constant challenge; transition is becoming an increasingly popular term in its place.

Alignment with in-country coordination needs is good. WASH has high levels of flexibility and speed of deployment. Weakness around integration between the three components of the FST.

Contributions to effectiveness in coordination, preparedness and response: generally strong. However, the FST is a few steps removed so harder to analyse this. In terms of Sphere Standards, there is real evidence that FSTs are promoting and working to these. There is a gap in terms of IM RRTs being deployed with well thought out tools.

Value for money: looking at data from dashboard, high value for money in these 4 L3s. Jan 2013 – Feb 2014, 48% of RRT, RECA and RAT time deployed found in these L3s.

RRTs are working well beyond capacity- 116% of the time. RATs and RECA less so, opportunity to reattribute responsibilities to address this. Integration offers opportunities for efficiencies.

Burnout is one of the major risks that needs to be taken into consideration. Inter-cluster coordination is overwhelming internal systems, especially in the responses from the

Philippines.

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The FST is managing to address gaps in the smaller emergencies as well, despite the stretch of capacity.

Sustainability: real emphasis is visible in trying to find a non-surge solution to lack of capacity, despite the complexities in terms of funding and recruitment.

Action: If you have been working in South Sudan and Syria, please approach Avenir in order to share your perspective. This is crucial to the success of the project. Please fill out GWC Meeting Feedback forms, and contribute any additional qualitative information in person or in writing to Brian, Kurt, Ben or Leilia.

Questions/Comments: Andy Bastable: when we say ‘need more expertise’ could we be more specific? Brian: will seek to identify this through research but hasn’t been surfacing so far. Jean Lapegue: suggesting rephrasing section on sustainability in terms of continuity. Would be good to have more specific data for the 3Rs in the costing section. Brian: this will be more specific in the report. Actual costs based on funding and components. Reluctant to comment at this point, but will also take perceived value into account in addition. The structure of the 3Rs often isn’t known by the cluster members Avenir is interviewing, so have to be careful about making assumptions of background knowledge and thinks it would be an unnecessary use of time to make them aware of this. Dominique Porteaud: disagrees- it is important to make sure people are able to request the right thing. At country office level, there are other challenges at play to prompt movement on recruitment. Much easier to go to CAST than to persuade their colleagues that more permanent recruitment is needed. Paul Shanahan: looks as though we are starting to build benchmark information that will help guide future development. Tables of costs are very complex to aggregate but this needs to be driven as accurately as possible, keeping track of the methodology, so that we can use it again down the road to track change. Clear evidence of the personal effort and commitment of the team and of effectiveness. On behalf of all members here and national clusters, thank you to the FST.

Session 6Challenges and opportunities to sustainably improve WASH coordination in the context of the Syria crisis, Pierre Fourcassie and Jola Miziniak (UNICEF)

The issues: water systems are particularly vulnerable to attack because water supply grid is decentralised. Only a couple of cases where they have been deliberately targeted. The biggest treatment plant in Syria has been out of use since February 2013, almost all others out too. So liquid waste is being directly put into the environment. Interventions: lots of water being supplied by trucks, and work is being done on pipes. Power supply is a particular issue so generators are being supplied through NGOs, UN and ICRC. IDPs: 500 centres with 200,000 people. Provided with basic WASH services. Increasing number of IDPs since 2013. 6.5 million IDPs in Syria, 5% in IDP collective centres, most in towns with families or renting apartments. 10m people now estimated to be affected. 4 or 5 m now out of Syria as refugees. 2 coordination mechanisms:

IDPs- ministry of local admin, ICRC and NGOs. Focus on water supply issues nationwide: SAG, Ministry of Water Resources, Oxfam, Mercy Corps,

ICRC, UNICEF, SARC. More than 2000 damaged schools- education a huge issue. Children either not in schools, or in very basic ones with little WASH support. Role of SAG: to carry out analysis of needs and gaps and optimise use of resources in response; to develop strategic framework; to identify new partners. Budget received so far is 62 million. 3-4 million reached with sustained water services; 6-7 m reached with

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chlorine. Facing problem with monitoring the utilisation of the chlorine. Hard to know whether water is drinkable at a local level. Water treatment: need to avoid spread of disease in the face of water treatment works being out of use. Over 18 mega Watts supplied through gen sets, 3200 tons of treatment chemicals supplied (water for 10,000,000 a month), 800,000 hygiene kits supplied. Main actors are ICRC and UNICEF. SHARP objectives and presence of partners: all NGOs in Damascas. Only ACF has headquartes in Ar-Raqqa. Challenges: shrinking humanitarian space, SARC people killed or kidnapped. Trying to negotiate access with convoys. The differing factions make this a challenge. Population movement. Multi-layered, bureaucratic system. Weakened private sector. Public institutions are the sole providers of public services, difficult to ensure accurate reporting and monitoring. INGO limitations because of difficulty of official links with local NGOS. In 2014:

Advocating for expansion of coordination efforts (more sub-national WASH coordinators). Plans to use current and future partnerships to scale up support. Advocate for access of UN and NGOs. \ Ensure public institutions are maintained and supported Increase in country contingency stock

Questions? Jean: Did Geneva 2 make any difference? WASH was mentioned as a key issue. Pressing the government for sanctioned cross border access was an issue, and one sight has now been identified for crossing from Turkey. Still very restricted.

Rick Bauer: What’s happening in terms of urban sanitation, especially the damaged treatment plant in Aleppo? No progress. Not the priority of the sector in 2013. This year, wastewater treatment plant commission under discussion but the priority is still the water supply.

Session 7Capacity Building Strategy for WASH Sector Coordination in Latin America: review of the FST initiatives and preliminary results, Antonio Marro (UNICEF) and David Alford (RRT NCA)

Presenting the findings of WASH LAC, has been in existence since 2008 (IFRC and UNICEF). Facilitating coordination between global and national level- details of work on slides. Region has the characteristics of high risk countries. 2014, working to build links with REDLAC (OCHA, NGOs) to improve work in the WASH sector with an inter sector focus. FST work plan 2014: more tailored support to countries through focal points. Need to create routes in to provide the detail required. Challenges include limited and diffuse links, political change, loss of institutional knowledge of the activities of the regional group.

Questions and CommentsHave they looked at the value add of the regional presence? Having the formal structure helps in the adaptation of global level structures to the countries. Focal points- how do they select and determine the roles? Selection is usually on a voluntary basis and role focusses on preparedness. Not funded, so is a lot of work in addition to previous role. Related to development and humanitarian activities. In LAC, no dedicated formal structure for humanitarianism, a good model for cohesive approach.

Session 8Integrating Development and emergency sectors for national cluster coordination- a reflection on capacity building strategies for communication. Andrew Parker

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National Humanitarian WASH Coordination (NHWC): As emergencies increase, we will be faced with harder choices so the steps we can take to increase national capacity are increasingly important. Sustaining the gains from humanitarian situations, empowering development partners to take these further. Deactivation a bad choice of word when looking at the aftermath. Talking about how the FST transitions to something more meaningful in the longer term is a more valuable approach. Aiming to measure countries with WASH coordination, national ownership, government led WASH fora, structured national ownership, transferred responsibilities to existing coordination processes. Externally, looking for strategic input through sector consultations (DFID, DGIS, Australia and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), South-South projects and SWA (Sanitation and Water for All, a donor group that lobbies to increase spending in the WASH cluster). SHA (Strengthening Humanitarian Action): a UNICEF initiative to look for new sources of capacity and ways of working. Strategic Plan 2014 to 2017: SHA is included. Focus countries identified, Ethiopia, Guinea Conakry, Sudan, Haiti and Mali. Next step is two consultancies, one to provide a framework understanding of what we will need to consider moving forward, the other is to develop a road map for these 5 countries. SWA high level meeting will be held in April 2014. Contact Andrew Parker or David Tsetse for further information. DRC Case Study, Brigitte: DRC: in the eastern part, a fragile state. 3 current crises, led by OCHA, lack of governmental coordination. Lack of capacity of local counterparts. In the west, minor scale crisis with cluster leads and national sector coordination platform. Strategy for the next 5 years: working towards having the government as cluster lead, co-facilitated by UNICEF. Have a capacity building programme in place for this. Coordination training, pilots in two provinces to support the government to become lead for 4Ws, preparedness, contingency planning, cholera and flood response, training and monitoring. Working to link emergency and development work to create a better environment to support the government on this. Gains the perspective of programmes, mapping funding, projects, actors, and contingency stock, and using advocacy. Working with OCHA to see how to bring other sectors in to this. Case study from Ethiopia, Kitka Goyol: One WASH National Programme recently launched to bring all stakeholders under one umbrella with one plan, budget, reporting system, procurement system, and financial management system. Current coordination mechanisms are chaired by a combination of governmental ministries and UNICEF. Strong evidence that there is national ownership of coordination mechanisms. But there are weak linkages between the ministries of health, education and water. Many issues happening here happen regularly, but investments aren’t targeting here so long term solutions aren’t found. These would no doubt require higher investments, but it also means the current system is not sustainable. Envisaged, longer term coordination structure: Water Sector Working Group secretariat WASH and WRM technical committees. Harmonisation between emergency and development is a key part of this. Linkages between key sector ministries, especially at urban WASH. As countries move towards middle income countries, its more difficult for actors to come in and play their role, we need to ensure state actors can take on these roles. We have to take on a more supporting role. Questions and CommentsKit: Is this happening in a WASH vacuum? Health also taking on a sector wide approach that is WASH’s base for this. On a global level, others sectors are seeking to become involved but there are structural considerations (i.e. Child Protection, needs to be able to advocate against governments sometimes). Souleymane: what do you see as the role of Humanitarian framework for Action within all this? Surprised that it wasn’t mentioned. National ownership and tensions behind the scenes in governments- makes it hard to stitch it all together. Architecture all needs to be involved, and will require the approach for every country to be different. So having a blueprint is an impossibility. We need to put something on the table that can clearly

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articulate a starting point from which to build strong products. Jean: currently two opportunities, revision of frameworks and advocacy. We debate around advocacy- do we support countries to advocate and support new frameworks? Also need to discuss whether this is UNICEF or Clusters. Also need to be in coherence with the strategic plans of UNICEF which are normally 5 years. Kitka: should have mentioned the resilience components of some of these activities. DFID funding for 5 year urban WASH programme looking at how to insert resilient WASH facilities to these programmes. Recently the Ministry of Water and Irrigation launched a green economy strategy, call for activities that could be funded to look at the use of reusable energy. Drew: not convinced that the Global WASH Cluster is the vehicle for this. There are agencies such as IFRC and OXFAM that have a better capacity to do this. Should we, as WASH Agencies be involved? But it is absolutely positive that we are expanding beyond our usual discussions. Robert Fraser: there is a tendency in our work to look for one solution to fit everything and to apply standard tools. It needs to be about developing solutions for individual contexts, and as we move forward with the FST, we need to be focussing on this individual contexts. Souleymane: you mentioned there was an opportunity to use past work by the WASH Cluster to inform this. Thinks could use cluster work in the selection of countries, to build on work that has been done previously and avoid competing initiatives. Drew: We have a lot of countries looking at this in dialogue with governments and saying it makes sense for us. The priority countries that the cluster has identified in the past years fit within this group. Trying to give a context into which investment can be realised towards a national ownership, putting something on the table that has a relatively low target but it is complicated, and it will take a long time to make it meaningful. So contributing to other things along the way is great, but that will depend who gets on board- it’s an open invitation!

Session 9 Composition and selection of WASH emergency stocks, Arild Isaksen (NCA)Norwegian Church Aid: work has focussed on WASH. Over the years have built up and adjusted NCA WASH Kit. Fits in one 40 foot container. 2014-15, NCA will review the use and content of equipment through consultation with GWC organisations and other stakeholders. Have a strong link with the ministry of foreign affairs and Innovation Norway/NOREPS. Andy Bastable: presenting the British modules Discussions about whether we need dedicated WASH cluster stock have gone on for years so it’s great to have reached this point. DFID also want to fund WASH cluster modules, but haven’t decided the number of modules yet in the two deployments they have committed to, or where to buy/store them. During the pilot, there were surprisingly few requests for them. So we still need to find out what the actual demand is for this (difficult to gauge), as the original value of this was intended to be for local NGOs. We may be pitching this wrong, or WASH Cluster Coordinators may not be pushing it enough. Looking at criteria with DFID with who makes request. This is an opportunity to provide more equipment through stockpiling, increasing scope for getting equipment into countries as a preparedness measure. Robert Fraser: prepositioning is an issue that the federation has had issues with in the past. Best solution for them is having a partner that can store and train on the equipment, then this can lead to the best take up. Andy: there are other agencies selling equipment. Prepositioning with partners may be the point that can make the most difference.

Session 10NOREPS and WASH equipment, Innovation Norway and suppliers, Vidar Ellingsen (Innovation Norway)

6 suppliers here to share their designs. Innovation Norway is a governmental entity with a mandate to support small and medium enterprises. USD1b annual budget. Have advisory services directly linked to the UN system, regarding how Norwegian companies can be involved in developing innovative solutions and technologies to improve response in humanitarian

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disasters (and to identify the solutions to humanitarian needs). Tasked by MoFA to manage the Norwegian Emergency Preparedness System. About prepositioning of equipment to increase global preparedness. Used to run a system of donations in kind, stopped in 2010 and replaced by cash contributions. 6 Norwegian NGOs and 1 GO and 35 Norwegian companies, administered by Innovation Norway. Questions and comments:Robert Fraser: what about local solutions? This should be the first priority, if it is possible. Has been done often.

Businesses Present: Lunne Produkter: provide WASH kits of NCA. A-aqua (Luke Dokter): formally Scandinavian Water Technologies. Working to improve hygiene. Price down to 80 euros per toilet (vacuum toilets). Sludge treatment project in collaboration with Red Cross, looking at kit to reduce cost and safe disposal of black water coming out of hospitals. Q from WHO: why would you wait for something to be imported from Norway if you could make it locally? Someone still has to provide the technical support and design. And is it the role of organisations to be designing the equipment, or should they be using their resources elsewhere? Robert Fraser: if it comes to high tech issues needing long term support, then this outside expertise is invaluable. There is no one size fits all solution. Jets (Frode Bakke): Manufacturer of vacuum toilets. Elevated toilets not the best for a long term response. Easily deployable. Located in 5 places around the world. 500 toilets can be set up in 7-8 hours. Environer: disasters call for need for shipping support. Have been working with WWF and Red Cross. Wastewater volumes are increasing. Emergency Relief Vessel: can arrive with 19m litres of water. Can pump to store or use barges for distribution. Have a bottling factory on board. Waste water can be processed and reused. 4 vessels in its profile. Comments: Andy Bastable: this is a very expensive solution. EcoWater: water purification systems from any fresh water source. Point of use systems. Eco Rescue Unit can deliver water to 15,000 people. Eco Rescue +: needs 230 vaults. Looking for a mobile solar energy solution to this. Green Gas (Bob Philipps): turning organic waste into biogas. Any community can turn waste back into hydrogen energy and nitrogen energy.

Day 2 Detailed Minutes from Discussion

Session 12Challenges and opportunities of the Transformative Agenda for WASH Cluster Coordination

Key points of the Transformative Agenda were empowered leadership, strategic planning, and strategic purpose. Leadership headed by IASC principles, supported by the emergency response coordinator and emergency directors group, the humanitarian coordinator, humanitarian country team.In any response, the heart of the work is the cluster coordinators. These exist to support partners, but evident that it is not working as fully as it should. Strategic Objectives: offers great value to a response. In an ideal world, clear objectives and a clear strategic operating framework should lead to strong agency response plans. We are still far away from this in reality. Strategic operating frameworks put in place about 50% of the time, capacity of the partners too low to deliberate on strategy and contributions. The strategic operating plan isn’t managing to influence agency response plan. WASH cluster leads by example. There are a huge number of strategic systems in place, outlined in the Humanitarian Programme Cycle, such as MIRA, Humanitarian Needs Overview, Operational Peer Review (OPR) done by predominantly UN agency staff, Cluster Performance Monitoring (CPM) a helpful tool which has been undercut by the demand for uniformity and wide distribution. Not sufficiently sensitive to national level needs

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to get something from cluster monitoring. Indicator Registry, Monitoring and Reporting System, Accountability to Affected Populations. Many of these not endorsed yet, but the pressure to make progress it there. Issues: intersection of agency and inter-agency processes. i.e. L3 activations happening at different levels at different times. Contrary to intentions, partners are being slowly excluded from this process, and it is becoming very UN heavy. This is to the detriment of the decision-making, because this is the most valuable voice we have for ensuring accountability to affected populations (AAP). Unfounded belief in the value of centralised guidance. The country offices (COs) are where the balance of power lies, so it is ambitious of the centre to believe they can produce valuable guides. Collectively we are in a position to address the deficit of focus on getting input and authority given to those with the on the ground experience. Information management: there has been a huge investment in this, but the amount of useful information received doesn’t reflect this investment. It is disproportionately designed to report upwards- needs to be recaptured and put at the services of affected populations. Unstrategic Freelancing- unrealistic demands made on those in the field to produce information in very little time. Parallel Communication Paths- OCHA willing to bypass Cluster Coordinators if they are unwilling to pass on badly designed products. Opportunities: there is a certain receptiveness now, as high level strategies haven’t taken us where we need to be. Need your help-

To make sure that what we have to say is valuable and reflective Simplify key processes and minimum guidance Articulate strategic direction in a simple and comprehensive way to COs Support national clusters to deliver using processed appropriate to context. Enforce a population focussed orientation. Upwards reporting demands need to be reduced (while

still reporting to donors) in order to rebalance where our effort is focussed. This is a multi-global cluster issue. Advocacy for partner engagement is crucial here and we need the help of everyone here to achieve this. Don’t suffer in silence or disengage. We need to be proposing an evidence based solution. Action: Please submit notes on current failures, and what should be doing about it, to Leilia Dore ( HYPERLINK "mailto:ldore@unicef.org" ldore@unicef.org). Questions and comments: Robert Fraser: what is the real driver of the TA? Paul: Failure of the humanitarian system, to some extent within the UN system. Its not getting better the way it should. Leadership issues went through straight from the Humanitarian Reform to TA, without being resolved. This is beginning to improve, although we are still a long way off. To address coordination, the cluster system was created, but that shifted the conversation to address the tool, rather than the original focus. This needs to be addressed- how do we meet the operational coordination needs in the field. Follow up: we hoped that the TA would go away, now looking for an opportunity to feed in to it. What about addressing it to the IASC principles on behalf of the non-UN family? Paul: doesn’t think it has been influence-able before now. Now that it has hit a wall, we have a much greater opportunity. Andy Bastable: the difference this time is that the IASC is involved, so it is our responsible to go to our directors and to put these things on the table and hold them accountable. But even if agencies at the IASC forum had been more engaged, would it have made a difference? Paul: Probably not, but if we are going to approach this from all directions we need to be sharing info, giving consistent advice to the decision makers. The easiest way for them to discount us is if we don’t have precise evidence. Paul Sherlock: under the original humanitarian response review, the partnership issue was an important one. It seems to have disappeared within the TA. System needs to be changed to enable us to advocate on our partners. Jean Lapegue: CERF is missed out of the TA. Paul: we should be using all avenues in a consistent way. This

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opportunity won’t be around for long. Convert complaints into effective advocacy. Brian Majewski: what do you have in mind in terms of delivering this feedback? How to ensure they are collective? Paul: this is a process of continuous improvement without an endgame. In terms of evidence base, it is more important for us to form informed opinions. Need to influence the system through what we have to say, so we need to find the evidence ourselves to support our standpoint. Every global coordinator needs to decide what direction they are facing.Osama Ali Maher (WHO): what is your opinion after nearly 8 years of having clusters- have they contributed to the verticality of the system? Has ‘çluster’ become too much of a trademark? Paul: this is a problem that goes back to humanitarian reform that wasn’t addressed by the TA. In developing clusters on sectoral lines, we reinforced an existing fragmentation in the system. This cannot be remedied by inter cluster activities trying to pull things together. Would advocate a strategy to deemphasise unproductive inter cluster activities in favour of multi cluster action, to instil the value of this into the system. Bringing together the clusters that can have a bigger impact through aligning their values, rather than bringing together everyone. Current discussion about a multi-cluster project in drought response, between nutrition, food security, WASH and 1 other.

Session 13Strategizing assessment, IM and monitoring needs in the WASH sector: possible ways forward, Franck Bouvet and Vicki O’Donnell

In 2012, discussions began about how to improve IM. Requests were made for simpler tools. A toolkit to cover the cycle of IM, and building the capacity of IMOs and on the ground. TA makes new demands on IM. Lots of lessons learnt that need to be incorporated. RRTs and RATs play roles in assessments. Lots of information generated at the beginning of an emergency. Assessment data and information needs, capacity and caseload response monitoring reporting. The IM role is to ensure the flow of this information. Looking at how to streamline this, making the steps required by the TA a bit easier. Opportunities: to harmonise assessments, streamlining information. To improve assessments, we can look at indicators, question banks, WASH templates, near-real-time feedback and technology. Would like to be working with partners and other clusters to come up with a good vulnerability dataset. This information is key to the whole response. Monitoring response: a heavy monitoring system is often initiated at the beginning, despite their being little response at this point. The tools being used (like excel) aren’t helpful in big emergencies, so will be looking at providing better options. Reporting: even with huge numbers of IMOs on the ground in the Philippines, a huge amount of information was produced that wasn’t used. This provides an opportunity for partners to be clearer about what they need, and to assess dissemination methods so that IMOs know what tools are available. Portals/Websites: New GWC website under development, an opportunity to use it as the one stop shop for GWC. Capacity Building: a focus within the UN at the moment for IM, assessments. In relation to the global WASH cluster partners, we need to know where the skillsets are and how to share these. Will be sending out a partner consultation in the next few weeks. Initially very broad, which will lead us to the right people within your organisation. Contact vickiodonnell@hotmail.com for further information. Questions and CommentsSouleymane: when it comes to IM, the people with the best value are the CCs and IMOs on the ground. Andy Bastable: Incentivisation for partners to contribute an important thing to consider. The RATS were a way to address how hard it was for us to get assessments from organisations. A simpler tool is a good thing, but creating a whole new system is a challenge in itself. With all the efforts to make things simpler, there needs to be an equal emphasis on incentivisation. Monica Ramos: what about data analysis? Vicki: this will be included in guidance notes, on cross analysis and how to ensure quality of data sets.

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Prasad: the need for involving governments in IM is increasing. Vicki: the data we can get from governments varies between emergencies. There are worldwide initiatives in developing spatial data. But there is a risk with basing emergency responses on uncertain data sets. Franck: we have demonstrated that we are not where we should be to provide a strategic response. The plan is to work for the next months to set our own system in order to enhance strategic response, so taking it step by step. Jean: Is 36 indicators simplifying the process? We are moving towards an integrated approach across clusters, and if our system is not connected with other clusters, we won’t get anywhere. Shouldn‘t shared systems be an initial priority, with then a few more WASH indicators in addition to this? Vicki: an open source, flexible system can be added to, but if we sought to bring in every cluster we will be here next year without progress.

Session 14Mainstreaming protection into WASH: a proposal for inter-cluster cooperation, Delphine Brun and Julien Marneffe

Delphine: An attempt to go beyond guidelines and to work more strategically. There needs to be an integrated and practical way to coordinate these issues, beyond a sole focus on gender. Target is for 100% of projects to be gender sensitive by 2015. We are now at 43%. There has been tangible progress within WASH. In the Philippines, was recognised that RRT members were most engaged with integrating gender into their work. Concrete steps taken by WASH cluster NGOs. Franck: guidelines on GBV, gender, CP, disability, HIV/AIDs, age, mine action- just within Protection- that WASH has to take into account. Not a very efficient system. Trying to focus on what the core commitments are in one specific document that could be used by partners and coordinators alike. Focus has been set on four commitments:

Assessment and design- a commitment to taking age/gender etc into account, to ensure programmes give meaningful access and minimise risks of violence.

Implementation- ensuring access to associate services to all. AAP- ensuring there is a complaint mechanism that enables us to receive and respond to feedback

regarding protection needs. Monitoring and evaluation of equal access using information and data disaggregated by sex and age. These are not new, but these guidelines are not being followed in reality. Huge progress is needed.

Would like to receive feedback as to whether this is practical and feasible, to influence whether CAST takes this forward. Comments and QuestionsRick Bauer: concerned that we are setting the bar too low when we talk about access. Shouldn’t just be about making sure the facilities are in place- its about how people use them, and how the systems are set in place. So need to define access. Also need to be more explicit about accountability. Getting feedback helps improve our programmes. Julien: accountability is something that is being taken seriously, with complaints linked to corrective action so that its not just one way information. Rick: but then it should be linked to M&E in addition. WASH needs to change over time for displaced people. Franck: the strategic framework in which we are currently working: gender included under the accountability umbrella. Oxfam currently helping us to develop a concept note on good programming with AAP. Souleymane: Myanmar, progress in mainstreaming of cross-cutting issues. Should we not be aligning our work forward on sphere to ensure we operationalize the cross-cutting issues that they are taking on board? There are 8 in the 2011 version of sphere. Franck: this not really instrumental for us as WASH. Delphine: the idea of the minimum commitments is to make things simpler, but yes, we refer back. Good to contextualise what is being done here. Will consultation be systematic? The best way to ask communities is a very cultural thing. Delphine: this whole system is to take this into account. Where men and women are questioned together, power dynamics still influence the issues raised. Having separate consultations doesn’t stop us having mixed ones too. Sandy Cairncross, LSHTM: Experience in India. The use of facilities by women was half that of men, connected

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to GBV issues with the construction and maintenance of the facilities. This ration of utilisation is a great insight into whether there is a problem. Want to study agencies that claim they are managing to eradicate GBV. Maybe it isn’t guidelines, but rather case studies of success, that would be useful. Jean: if we want to strengthen the process and have commitment from partners, it should come through the SAG. Could we have a fifth commitment to having a gender balance within the team? Brigitte: if there is going to be a complaints mechanism, this needs to be explained to the communities it is for. Would like to see more in terms of M&E to ensure the real impact on quality that this approach has. Evaluation needs to go further. Silvia Ramos: on behalf of partners: good to know doing well with regards to gender marker. Could we revise the methodology behind the evaluation of the gender marker? Complaints from partners that there is not enough space in evaluation systems. There needs to be guidance on the language and methodology- what does ‘safe and accessible’ really mean? Delphine: need to ensure these elements are reflected. The gender markers are a tool to help project managers consider these things, your tool.

Session 15Progress of the OFDA Emergency Sanitation Project (ESP), William Carter and Angus McBride

A consortium. The ESP is one of the cluster projects. Specific way of addressing sanitation needs- driven by frustration with suppliers and with Haiti, very complex sanitation needs. Red Cross had 300,000 people to respond to, and the need for better preparedness was evident. BUZA (Dutch MoFA) gave a grant. 2012, brought together academics, suppliers and humanitarian experts for 3 days to assess where things stood with what was available/required. Has led to an innovative design process funded by OFDA. Angus McBride: Alternative Toilets and Hand washing ‘donate by design ’project. Desludging: Getting access to human waste is a challenge within this area. Dominican Republic and Haiti, getting trucks in very difficult. Desludging flat pack kit- looks temporary by design to avoid being seen as a threat to the local desludging industry. Ammonia, lime and lactic acid as options for sludge treatment being explored, ways to treat waste without extensive equipment. For sludge disposal, looking at anaerobic digestion, vermi composting (worms), bioadditives- this is the ideal. Lots of commercially available products that don’t demonstrate good results. The way forward: a document will be shared outlining the products. Closing some streams and exploring new ones. Interested in expanding partnerships and offering trialling services- i.e. facility in Malawi where can conduct tests with real waste products. Questions and comments:Monica Ramos: has there been any thinking about how to address cholera in dealing with waste products? W: lots of research being done in Malawi to address this. Andrew Parker: would be good to contextualise this project in the scope of the other projects. Gates, redesign the toilet, Hiff technical group. Robert Fraser: desludging flat pack kit, one more trial then looking at having it on kit lists by the end of the year by Red Cross and Oxfam. Andy Bastable: the idea of this project was to make it widely available so that anyone can access it, not just to get it on kit lists. Keeping it as open spec as possible.

Session 16Latest Developments on Urban WASH- what is the role of the GWC? Dominique Porteaud (UNHCR) and Drew Parker (UNICEF)

Richard Luff is a consultant looking into Urban WASH. One of several projects between UNICEF and UNHCR. Urban is not in the cluster strategy. At the end of 2012 it was requested for UNICEF to take the lead with UNICEF and UNHABITAT (Graham Alabaster) supporting. What emerges will be recommendations for the sector as a whole. The urban gap is often seen as inevitable, so we tend to look for technical solutions to our

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own challenges. This is an attempt to break out of this and to see how we can connect with others. With developing states moving into middle income, refugee camps, etc definitions of urban become blurred. W e have the opportunity to look less short term with our WASH solutions, looking towards an exit strategy for ourselves. The consultancy will produce a checklist for urban WASH, a process of analysing who we engage with. This will lead to prioritised recommendations. Please contact: HYPERLINK "mailto:richardluff06@googlemail.com" richardluff06@googlemail.com for further information. Richard Luff: Humanitarian actors try to manage a crisis in a city, but the local administration try to manage a city in crisis. How much are we prepared to think and act differently, as we need to do in the urban context? There needs to be a transition from service providers to enablers. This work will be spread over 6 months. Group discussion key points:

How we link up to the private sector/service providers will be crucial. Reinforcing where we can capitalise on in country experience, i.e. where pipes are bigger than we are

used to, supply chains etc. role of enabler, rather than service provider. What expertise will agencies need in order to be an enabler Standards of service delivery

Session 17

How to distil an evidence-based selection of best practices? A discussion around the systematic review of WASH intervention for Cholera Outbreak Responses, Dawn Porter (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)

Reviewed current cholera guidelines and looked at evaluation reports from past outbreaks. 100% agreement on supplying sufficient and treated water, hygiene promotion and food safety, communal latrines and hand washing points in public places, and safe funeral practices. 83% agreement on temporary or improved water supply systems, water quality monitoring, mass media communication of messages and good safety training. 67% household water treatment and safe storage50% water venders and tanker owner involvement, bucket chlorination at source, impersonal communication, distribution of soap and hygiene kitsOther lesser mentioned factors described on slideshow. Behaviour interventions and hygiene promotion in schools only mentioned once. Not recommended: chlorination of unlined wells, household disinfection spraying, borehole drilling. Carried out a systematic review of 5 online databases. 19 studies between 1984 and 2013. Most in epidemic settings, some endemic. Did statistical quality assessment and epidemiological quality assessment. 8 papers looked at water treatment at source. The acceptability of well chlorination by the affected population wasn’t explored by these papers. Useless if information and education not also used to ensure that water hygiene is also practiced. No real evidence on sanitation intervention alone. Current practice promote communal latrines. Need to ask ourselves whether we should be doing more on sanitation. Hygiene promotion: lots of evidence on using soap and water to wash hands. Using mass media for messaging also seen as valuable, but doesn’t necessarily translate into practice. Need more research on this and how to disseminate hygiene promotion materials. Research gaps:

Water supply Water household treatment- more evidence needed on correct and sustained use.

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NFI/Hygiene kits Hygiene promotion

Evidence based best practice: making decisions using a systematic approach. Using best available research, practitioner expertise and local knowledge/need/preferences/values. Then need to actively get this information into the public domain. At LSHTM carrying out a field research project, WASH RECORD (real time evaluation of cholera outbreak response). Objectives to strengthen the evidence base, inform policy and practice, and inform revision of sphere wash indicators. A before and after study, and a case control study. Outcomes will be:

A reduction in cholera incidence in intervention areas Awareness of the odds of cholera in those exposed to the WASH interventions compared to those not

exposed % of respondents demonstrating effective knowledge and use of WASH interventions.

Asking for support on sourcing evaluation reports and tools, on lessons learnt (WASH interventions and hygiene promotion dissemination methods) and WASH strategies on community focused interventions.

Questions and comments: Jean: Ethics? D: can’t be randomized due to ethical reasons, will be a limitation. Has also been a study looking at regression curves that might be useful. Franck: how long will this take? Dawn: 2-3 months studying three outbreaks. How will factors such as vaccinations etc be controlled? Data collection will have to be very specific and extensive. If this report will influence guidelines, what would the next steps be? Will be able to see what recommendations are working and which aren’t, and consider consolidation of guidelines as was done for malaria. Souleymane: the 19 selected documents- did you look at whether they sourced information from one another? Lots of information sourced from journals, but work was done to be sure that peer reviewed documents were what was used here. Ben Allen: how to actually role out this study with the last minute nature of the research? Will depend if and when it happens. Looking for agencies who will commit up from (MSF at the moment) to go with their emergency team. Will recruit locally for surveyors. Lots of preparatory work to be done. Osama Ali Maher: the available peer reviews are highly contextual, as are WASH interventions. Won’t this study need multiple rounds in order to view the changes of the recommendations made in the report? Have to start somewhere as there isn’t any good evidence as we stand currently.

Session 19 Technical support service, Tim Kent (Knowledge Point)2012, Knowledge point received a large Hiff award to develop a working live site. This is the beginning of the implementation stage. It is a forum structure where questions can be asked to a community to gather responses. A collaborative process, network for information to be shared and peer reviewed. The questions coming up are publically visible. Being used in several different ways- for field operatives to discuss issues etc. our challenge is to consider how WASH would like to use this information. WaterAid, IRC, Practical Action, redr, EngineerAid already involved and the more people we can get involved the stronger it will be. Please use it- www.KnowledgePoint.org- and improve it with feedback and input. Have been collaborating with WASH since the beginning and would be good to know whether this is seen as meeting our needs. Questions and comments: Rob Fraser: What about quality assurance, where wrong information could be given? Tim: Queries and responses are vetted before they go on the sight. The 200 members are also playing a role in this. Purely by being open source, it’s a step beyond business as usual with the ability to challenge knowledge. Also ways to accept/rate/endorse answers- waiting for feedback on these before they are made visible.

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Colin, Medair: what’s the main selling point between this and watersanitationhygiene.org that’s already providing a platform? Not looking to replace these. Working more directly with organisations. The benefit of this is that with organisational backing and compatibility with emails it is more appealing to people working within challenging environments and provides some security. Vicki: the information given might be relevant in the future- will you be looking at the sustainability of maintaining the information? This is pretty critical data, so backups are being ensured. This may be a way to challenge the loss of institutional knowledge buried in email inboxes, lost on people’s retirement.

Session 20 Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) ProjectA fund run by DFID with funding available for project proposals. WASH stream focusses on gap analysis, with beneficiaries confirming that WASH was a major gap, that there were repeated drainage problems. Now picking up on the challenges identified and using open innovation and debate to find solutions. Designers, suppliers and practitioners brought together to debate challenges at workshops. Open innovation forum: latrine lighting. Brought in 500 contributions, shortlisted then evaluated by a technical working group. Another two going out, one on collapsible jerry cans and low cost desalination. Accelerated innovation processes- 5 proposals, discussed by the technical forum and funding went to a project monetising compost and desludging in camps. Also 2 proposals looking at bio additives, encouraged them to work together for a united proposal. Also looking at how to improve what we currently do in terms of drainage in camps. Will also be a think tank on urban infrastructure.

Session 21 Update on MyanmarPutting Myanmar on the map, Souleymane: deliberate attacks on the 26th and 27th of March on humanitarian workers and premises by a vocal minority Rakhine community. Agencies have pulled back to Yangon. Inter-communal violence between Muslim Rohingya’s and ethnic Rakhines. Denial of rights for citizenship, basic movement etc despite having lived in Myanmar for generations. WASH cluster were anticipating the need to keep a low profile and to find an innovative way of carrying out humanitarian activities. There are 66 IDP camps in the Rakhine region. There have been daily meetings in Yangun to see how to keep bringing humanitarian services in this situation. Advocacy from various fronts including the WASH cluster, Save, Solidarite and DRC already seeking to make their way back in but no guarantee they will be granted access. Humanitarian needs are increasing and throwing up increasing challenges, such as these new, open attacks. Please give this some thought and think about potential need for scale up.

Session 22 Wrap up of day 2 and decision on next GWC meetingNominations: Amman, Dakhar (Senegal), Suva (Fiji), Panama, Kathmandu

Robert Fraser speaking in favour of WCARO (has had a high need looking at the dashboard). Our biggest customer base. Ben Allen: Jordan, relevant for Syria crisis, central, urban context. Franck: Suva a forgotten region. Andy: Dakhar, main attention for the FST and if we can get local governments from Mali and Niger all to Senegal, would be a huge advantage to build their humanitarian understanding.

Vote: Amman: 2Dakar: 21 or 22Suva: 1Panama: 2

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Kathmandu: 1

AfricaSan may be something that inhibited Dakar.