World Water Week - Stockholm - Tuesday 23 August, 17:45 - 18:45 , Room K24

In cooperation with Un-Habitat; ZAWA-Zanzibar Water Authority; UNESCO Etxea; ANGOZA (Association of NGOs in Zanzibar); International Water and Health Alliance.

The official recognition by United Nations of the human right to water and sanitation in July 2010 paves the way for implementing a Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA) to help improve water and sanitation governance. A HRBA requires a holistic and more participatory approach, emphasizing the need for more stakeholders’ involvement in water management, and as a tool to help countries ensure both equity-oriented and sustainable development.

National water policies in Tanzania and Zanzibar allow participation in water management. The side event will look at community/users participation in water supply management and quality monitoring from different perspectives: social/legal and technical.

The social dimension of the supply will be discussed by assessing the extent to which the participatory model adopted in Zanzibar addresses the human right criteria developed by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation. The session will present the methodology used and the preliminary results obtained from the multi-stakeholder analysis of recently appointed water committees and other activities.

The technical dimension will be debated through the presentation of experiences and developments of community participation in water quality monitoring. Low-cost, manageable systems for monitoring water quality have been lacking due to the high cost, technical complexity and time associated with conventional methods. Rapid water quality testing, recently piloted within the well-established framework of Water Point Mapping, is emerging as a promising new methodology as simple, low-cost technologies are becoming available.

Its use is enabling water user committees, water authorities and communities to address water issues in a broader perspective than before. The event will discuss the results and impacts of the studies and draw ideas from participants on further development of the approaches.

Programme

Moderator: Serena Arduino, ACRA

17:45-17:50 Introduction
17:50-18:00 Human right-based approach to water and sanitation (Natalia Uribe, UNESCO-ETXEA)
18.00-18:15 Multi-stakeholders analysis of the Zanzibar Water Committees (Zanzibar Water Authority)
18:15-18:30 Water point testing in the Iringa Region, Tanzania Mainland (Robert H. Metcalf, International Water and Health Alliances;Lars Stordal, UN-HABITAT)
18:30-18:45 Q&A, debate