Water and Sanitation for Africa to facilitate GLAAS process in Ghana, 19 countries

Source: RCN

To assist facilitate the UN-Water Global Assessment and Analysis of Sanitation and Drinking Water (GLAAS) implementation and country level consultations in Africa, the World Health Organisation (WHO), is working closely with the Pan African Inter-governmental Agency, Water and Sanitation for Africa (WSA).

WSA will lead the country level process in Ghana and 19 other African countries where they have field staff, while WHO, would support the process through its own country offices in 10 more countries, to make the total 30. 

This was disclosed at a Ghana Process Briefing and launch of the 2012 UN-Water GLASS report in Accra September 12, 2013.GLASS is a UN-Water initiative that collates a comprehensive overview of data aimed at determining factors that are constraining or enabling progress towards meeting the MDG target for sanitation and drinking-water.

It monitors global inputs and self-assessed national capacities to deliver sanitation and drinking-water services and has a major objective of identifying drivers and bottlenecks to progress towards MDG/national targets and to serve as a repository of global data for decision-makers such as Sanitation and Water for All.

In her presentation at the Ghana briefing, Mrs Destina Samani, Country Representative for WSA in Ghana, said the aim of the initiative, is to implement GLAAS 2014 in 30 countries in the African Region.“Another opportunity is here for us to benchmark self-reported data, by working together on developing indicators and standards more relevant to our country,” she acknowledged.

Outlining the processes to be employed in the 2014 GLASS implementation, she enumerated that it would include notification of government to provide leadership, nomination of a national focal person, face to face discussions with relevant agencies and questionnaire distribution through a focal person to relevant key agencies.

Further, it would entail completion of a draft questionnaire, completion of final data collection, a national validation workshop, submission of final completed questionnaire to sector minister for approval and then submission to WHO headquarters through WSA’s headquarters in Ouagadougou.

The GLAAS 2012 101 page report titled: “The Challenge of Extending and Sustaining Services” included 74 developing countries and all major donors.

The 2012 report highlights low capacity of many governments to spend the limited resources allocated to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); the challenge of extending and sustaining coverage; lack of focus on managing WASH assets; and re-emphasises lack of robust data, particularly on financial flows to WASH FACTS.         

The GLAAS initiative is implemented by the World Health Organisation (WHO).         

A GLAAS report is produced every 2 years by WHO and so provides a regular (biennial) global update, complementing the Joint Monitoring Platform (JMP).         

First assessment report was released in 2010, the second in 2012 and the next assessment will be released in 2014.        

GLAAS is an instrument used by Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) to provide evidence for the biennial High Level Meetings (HLMs) and help countries prepare their WASH country profiles for the HLM.

Participants @ the launching of GLAAS