| Since
its foundation in 1968, the International
Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) has facilitated
the sharing, promotion and use of knowledge so that
governments, professionals and organisations can better support
poor men, women and children in developing countries to obtain
water and sanitation services they will use
and maintain.
Urban
sanitation faces many challenges to livelihoods
such as extreme poverty, high unemployment, high population
and housing densities, water scarcity and lack of infrastructure.
IRC is planning to address these issues during a three-day
symposium linking its 40th anniversary with the International
Year of Sanitation.
 Programme
Themes
- Local
urban governance. The intermediate level is of
crucial importance for the delivery of sustainable sanitation
services to the urban poor. Good governance is needed to
ensure accountability, coordination, participatory planning,
gender and social equity and so on. We will seek to answer
questions such as: Who are the urban poor? Which stakeholders
play key roles in ensuring good governance for the poor?
- Partnerships
for sanitation for the urban poor. Partnerships
with small-scale service providers and communities show
promise. However, partnerships and contractual arrangements
are linked to the policy and legislative environment in
general. We will focus on the question of how to formalise
and regulate informal partnerships for service delivery,
engage citizens, give equal chances to poor women who for
practical and strategic reasons need employment near to
their homes, and how to put by-laws and regulations in place
and enforce them. Government has a key regulatory role to
play. How successfully have they shifted from being providers
to enablers and regulators?
- Dynamics
of urban settlements. Poor urban settlements are
not static but changing continuously. However, hidden underneath
are strong structures, including institutions and processes
and a culture of patronage that link different groups of
slum dwellers to their leaders, the urban administration,
and local politicians. We will discuss the socio-political,
demographical and geo-environmental processes behind the
dynamics of urban settlements, and explore how these dynamics
can hamper or enhance the delivery of urban sanitation services
to the poor.
- Innovative
finance. Decentralisation of budgets is mostly
lagging behind the decentralisation of authority and responsibilities.
Given the low priority that is given to sanitation to the
urban poor, innovative finance mechanisms are needed to
mobilise the financial resources to provide them with sanitation
services.
- Urban
sanitation technologies. Urban sanitation services
for the urban poor demand technical innovations that are
appropriate and affordable for different types of users
and can be scaled up. Special attention will be paid to
the lowest cost technologies, upgrading and self-build,
with alternatives for those who cannot do their own construction.
- Participatory
Research. We will invite four or five young people
from the South to share their image of the urban poor and
the needs, demands and approaches for the different kinds
of poor people in terms of age, sex, location etc. in their
own way.
Futher
Details
For further details and to
register please refer to the web site below
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