Sudan national sanitation and hygiene strategic framework

Highlights

The Republic of Sudan remains one of the most poorly performing countries in terms of access to sanitation facilities. According to the Sudan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS 2014), only 33 per cent of its population use improved sanitation facilities while 29 per cent have no sanitation facilities at all and continue to defecate in the open. The remaining use shared or unimproved sanitation facilities which do not guarantee safe and hygienic conditions for a healthy environment. The MICS 2014 also shows significant disparities in access to improved sanitation between the different states and between urban and rural settlements. Access to improved sanitation falls between about 10 per cent in Gadaref State and about 79 per cent as in Northern State and between 22 per cent for rural and 57 per cent for urban areas.

Sudan is a signatory to key global actions and commitments on sanitation and hygiene such as the AfricaSan and Sanitation and Water for All; the eThekwini and Ngor Declarations. But there has been a wide gap between political commitment to and the provision of sanitation coverage. One of the reasons has been that sanitation has received low prioritization in the WASH strategies so far, with most of the funding and resources being allocated towards provision of water resources. Second, on the whole, the sector funding for sanitation has been low, both among donor funding and investments made by the government. Thirdly, there are several bottlenecks at the institutional level with inadequate capacity to roll out and implement community led sanitation approaches, weak coordination and lack of harmonization among different actors engaged in sanitation. Another reason has been the greater attention given to humanitarian contexts than development, with most of the donor funding being directed towards addressing emergency situations which is a growing concern in Sudan.

The Sudan National Sanitation and Hygiene Strategic Framework (SNSHSF) has been developed to provide strategic direction for scaling up sanitation and hygiene across Sudan. The document also a guide for different approaches such as capacity development; promotion of improved technology options through sanitation marketing; provision of sanitation facilities in public places; Community-Led Total Sanitation; promotional and media campaigns; creating enabling environment and coordination mechanism.

In this strategy document an indicative investment required for achieving different action plan is estimated with proposed financing options from government at all levels, the private sector, especially for construction of sanitation facilities in public places and the cost by households for construction of household sanitation facilities.