• Water and sanitation

Water and sanitation

Delivering public services is a top priority in fragile states if these states are to make progress towards
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This discussion paper provides an understanding of the impact of state fragility on service delivery and offers policy lessons and recommendations for strengthening service provision and governance, based on examination of four strategically important sectors in the daily lives of most people, namely:

• justice and security
• healthcare
• education
  
• water/sanitation

The paper says that Justice/security and education appear to be the most transformative kinds of services
in a fragile setting, but they are also the most prone to polarisation and manipulation. Healthcare and water/sanitation, the most politically neutral sectors, seem to offer the best opportunities for cooperation across communal lines, as well as for civic governmental partnerships.

The effects of fragility stretch beyond poor services to include conflict, state collapse, and loss of territorial control, extreme political instability, clientelist policies and repression or denial of resources to subgroups of the population.

The paper makes the following recommendations to the donors to improve service delivery in fragile states

• donors need both contextual analyses of the country and a mapping of current service realities.
• donors need to achieve humanitarian goals while also advancing long-term sustainability – that is, helping to deliver essential services in a way that builds accountability and ensures government takes ultimate responsibility
• donor agencies must recognise when a country or region changes status and adjust their strategies accordingly. Key points of transition for donor programmes are from humanitarian to development aid and the movement from non-state providers to primary government responsibility for service delivery
• deteriorating situations pose special challenges. Donors must make choices about reinforcing the government in power or, conversely, withdrawing support as a sanction and signal of distancing

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