Special Session

The session cuts across priority 1: Water security and Sanitation (human rights to water and sanitation) and priority 3: Cooperation (strengthen dialogue and partnerships…)

The session intends to fit within the following themes:
human rights access to watsan, access for all, relations between ethics and water & sanitation services and interfaith collaboration/dialogue.

Objectives

Les zones humides jouent un rôle important dans la sécurité de l’eau, la résilience des communautés, la réduction des risques climatiques et la sécurité humaine. Les gouvernements Africains s’engagent pour leur sauvegarde à travers des plans et politiques nationaux et internationaux comme la Grande Muraille Verte et la Convention des Nations Unies sur la Lutte Contre la Désertification.

The private sector is a major player in driving innovation and developing demand-driven knowledge-based solutions in the water and sanitation sector. German companies within the water and sanitation sector have recognized that the key factors which ensure their long-term viability and sustainability of investments are employees with exactly the right qualifications as well as sector-specific knowledge and skills. For this reason, the private sector is continuously investing in training young people.

Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) is a public service approach to planning and implementing urban sanitation systems to achieve outcomes summarized by Sustainable Development Goal 6: safe, equitable, and sustainable sanitation for everyone in an urban area, paying special attention to the needs of the poor, the marginalized, and women and girls. To advance and sustain SDG outcomes at a meaningful scale, all CWIS systems must demonstrate three core functions:
• A responsible authority(ies) is executing a public mandate for inclusive urban service delivery.

The primary focus of the session will be to present AfWA with focus on its contribution to empower African private and public WASH operators for better achieving the SDG 6. This session would allow AfWA to showcase of its strategy to scale up programs for high impact in accelerating access to water and sanitation services in Africa.

Non-sewered sanitation is largely predominant in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2020, this sanitation method, often managed informally, represented 72% of the access in rural areas and 78.6% in urban areas. Therefore, formalizing non-sewered sanitation should be considered as a key issue for local authorities, which are usually responsible for this service.

Water professionals increasingly need to address pollution by chemicals of emerging concern’s (CECs), including low dose and mixtures effects on early indicators of toxic pathway, which cannot be evaluated by traditional substance-based analytical methods.

The impact of the environment on the health of individuals and communities is profound. Nowhere is this reality felt as strongly as on the African continent, where a large proportion of diseases are determined by environmental factors, and where the living conditions of communities (habitat, food, transport) make them extremely vulnerable to changes in the environment and climate.

OSH Forum is an international and collective initiative that aims to produce tangible evidence based recommendations towards the operational implementation of an integrated One Sustainable Health approach. These recommendations will be made by the 6 International Working Groups and synthesized in a One Sustainable Health Declaration to be published during the World Health Summit 2022 October in Berlin. This declaration will provide guideline s for operational programmes and public policies for states, international agencies, companies, NGOs and foundations.