Universal access to safe drinking water is a central challenge for RWSN and all our members. This is enshrined in international law, through the Human Right to Water, and in international policy, through Sustainable Development Goal 6.1. Many countries have translated those international rights and responsibilities into national and sub-national laws and policies, but not all. Even among those who have made, progress is uneven, and the barriers are many, complex and interrelated.

The Leave No-one Behind Theme is a place for civil, open discussion on these barriers to universal water access, sharing of experiences of these challenges and practical experiences of success in overcoming them.

Topics within the Theme include, but are not limited to:

• The practical realisation of the Human Right to Water and supporting the UN Special Rapporteur and the synergies and tensions with other Human Rights, including the Rights to Sanitation and Food.
• Gender equality and women’s rights: Empowering women and young girls and promoting gender equality through rural water services as water users, water professionals and decision-makers.
• Improving transparency, social accountability and integrity.
• Menstrual and peri-menopausal health and other critical dimensions of hygiene that can deliver better public health outcomes.
• Overcoming systematic barriers to inclusion, including:
  • Physical access.
  • Affordability.
  • Remoteness.
  • Awareness and education.
  • Deliberate and unconscious bias against ethnic, racial, caste and socio-economic groups.
  • Unhelpful colonial legacies (including legal and institutional structures).
  • Harmful or counter-productive post/neo-colonial behaviours by international actors.

Key Publications

• Women’s empowerment through rural water supply activities: A practical guide by and for practitioners of the Rural Water Supply Network
   
• Cost effective ways to leave no-one behind in rural water and sanitation – Summary on the RWSN E-discussion (RWSN, 2019)
• Gender and rural water services- lessons learned from RWSN members (RWSN 2017)
• Social accountability for rural water services (RWSN 2018)
• Reducing inequalities in water, sanitation and hygiene: synthesis of discussions in the ENDI group (RWSN 2015)
• Human rights to water and self-supply- potential and challenges (RWSN 2015)
• Including persons with disabilities in water sector operations: a guidance note (World Bank 2017)
• Toolkit for mainstreaming gender in water operations (World Bank Group 2016)
• Compendium of accessible WASH technologies
• Realising the human rights to water and sanitation: A handbook (United Nations, 2014)
• Human Right to Water: What does it mean in Practice? (RWSN, 2013)
• Removing barriers to water, sanitation and hygiene (WEDC, 2014)
• Violence, Gender & WASH Toolkit (WaterAid/SHARE, 2014)
• Working effectively with women and men in water, sanitation and hygiene programs (University of Technology Sydney, 2010)
• Inclusion made easy: A quick programme guide to disability in Development, (CBM, 2012)
• Webinar recording (2015) Radio for Rural Water Supplies
• Webinar recording (2015) Gender, violence and access to WASH

Where to go next:

• Make Rights Real - the campaign platform
• You can find out more and join the RWSN Leave No-one Behind community on dgroups
• Do you have a question? Ask KnowledgePoint
• Find out more on Akvopedia about:

  • Rights-based Approaches