On 16th April 2014 WaterAid – on behalf of SWA – facilitated a 1.5 hour Focus Session at the first High Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) in Mexico City, Mexico. The session was organised jointly with the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and International Health Partnership (IHP+), to share experiences of the health, education and water and sanitation sectors in translating aid effectiveness principles into results at the sector level.
The Session was the first time these three global sector partnerships had come together, to explore the changing ways governments and other domestic and external development actors, including civil society, work together to accelerate sector-level progress, reforms and impact. Representing Sanitation and Water for All, SWA Vice Chair Darren Saywell explained how the Partnership contributes to the WASH sector, the types of behaviours it encourages in order to foster aid effectiveness and mutual accountability, and some of the challenges facing the partnership as it continues to evolve.
There was clear agreement that sector-level partnerships are essential to delivery of results, and provide a unique forum through which to foster the collaboration and mutual accountability. In particular, participants highlighted the vital role partnerships such as SWA, GPE an IHP will have to play in delivery of ambitious new sustainable development goals through the Post2015 framework.
The Session also presented an opportunity to highlight the commonalities across the three partnerships, and for SWA to reach a new audience of influential policy and decision makers beyond the WASH sector. The global water and sanitation crisis has a profound impact on all areas of human development, including health and education, and the outcomes the three partnerships are striving towards are inextricably linked. It is therefore more important than ever to build the links across human development, at both global and national levels.
The session was moderated by Anders Nordstrom, Ambassador for Global Health, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden, with interventions from 6 panellists:
• Carmen Juan, Secretary of Health, Mexico
• Margaret Chan, Director General, World Health Organization
• Alice Albright, CEO, Global Partnership for Education
• Hon Demeke Mekonnen, Deputy Prime Minister, Ethiopia
• Darren Saywell, Vice Chair, Sanitation and Water for All
• Sachita Shrestha, Programme Officer, Restless Development Nepal
Other speakers included: Mabinty Darami, Deputy Minister of Finance, Sierra Leone; Péter Wintermantel, Deputy State Secretary for Global Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, on behalf of the co-chair of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, and participants from African Development Bank; Burkina Faso, Rwanda and USA. Altogether, 70-80 people attended.
For more information please contact Clare Battle clarebattle@wateraid.org / +44 (0)20 7793 4502