Fleur Anderson said, "It has been great to be a part of FANSA’s strategy meeting in Bangladesh, as the International Coordinator for the End Water Poverty campaign". She gave an interview to Prakash Amatya, Regional Communication Officer about the global campaign process and her experiences working together with FANSA.
End Water Poverty is a global campaign which brings together the voices of water and sanitation campaigners in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. By campaigning together we hope that our national campaigns can have even more effect and realize the right to water and sanitation for all. FANSA members some of the 180 members organizations of End Water Poverty and we’ve campaigned together in actions such as the World’s Longest Toilet Queue, and the World Walks for Water.
End Water Poverty and the Sanitation and Water for All partnership
FANSA members, together with the other End Water Poverty members, have been campaigning for a Global Framework for action to bring international pressure for more finance, spent in more effective ways. The successful campaign for this resulted in the creation of the Sanitation and Water for All partnership last year. Governments in the global north and south come together with civil society and lots of other key water and sanitation partners with three aims: to increase political prioritization for water and sanitation (with a bi-annual High Level Meeting), to gather and use better information about water and sanitation services (with the GLAAS report), and creation of national plans which are better able to deliver sanitation and water for all. It is especially aimed at those countries which are least likely to meet the MDGs for water and sanitation.
Role of FANSA
FANSA is a member of the steering committee (Yakub Hossain is the representative) and so together you can help to create and steer the SWA as it establishes itself and continues to work both internationally and nationally. It provides the best opportunity ever for the FANSA campaigns to work at the international level and so provide a whole level of international pressure on governments. But we need to be organized and focused to make the most of this. The first step is for FANSA organizations to find out more about this process and then think about how it can help to make on-going campaigning even more effective.
FANSA and the global advocacy challenges
The global advocacy challenges are that aid is being challenged by the credit crisis an recession, increasing interest by decision makers in water – but more on water and energy and water scarcity but not drinking water and hygiene, and the changing role for civil society offered by more responsive government: it is challenging to our movements to move from being outside government policy and planning to being more inside but still retaining our independence and critical edge.
FANSA is very well-placed to respond well to all of these, and the clearer and more focused your new strategy is, the easier you can work to join the national campaigns with international action.
Each of the aims for FANSA’s new three year strategy have clear international elements, which can be brought together into joint advocacy through joint actions like World Walks for Water and Sanitation in March. This way we can join up national advocacy and campaigning with international campaigns so that together we can be even more effective.