Equality in Water and Sanitation Services

There is growing acceptance that the progress delivered under the Millennium Development Goal target for drinking water and sanitation has been inequitable. As a result, the progressive reduction of inequalities is now an explicit focus of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets, adopted in 2015, for universal access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). This shift in focus has implications for the way in which the next generation of WASH policies and programmes will be conceived, designed, financed, and monitored.

This book provides an authoritative textbook for students, as well as a point of reference for policy-makers and practitioners interested in reducing inequalities in access to WASH services. Four key areas are addressed: background to the human right to water and development goals; dimensions of inequality; case studies in delivering water and sanitation equitably; and monitoring progress in reducing inequality.

Oliver Cumming is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, where he works on the epidemiology of water and sanitation-related diseases. He is currently working on multiple trials to assess the impact of water and sanitation interventions on childhood enteric infection, undernutrition and oral vaccine failure in Africa and South Asia.

Tom Slaymaker is a Senior Statistics and Monitoring Specialist in the Data and Analytics section at UNICEF Headquarters, USA. He has nearly 20 years of experience working on water and sanitation in Africa and Asia, and currently co-leads the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP).