WWD 2001 Event
Celebrating Water & Health in Northern Iraq
A great opportunity - Action in three governates - Schools participation - Good media coverage - Generating public interest and immediate follow-up - Internal effects - Contact
A great opportunity
The theme of the World Water Day in 2001 -“Water & Health” afforded a great opportunity for the UNICEF programme in Northern Iraq to communicate to the general public and to mobilise key partners around the approach it advocates of “Total Environmental Sanitation.” Notwithstanding its tremendous investment in supplying safe drinking water and providing means for sanitary disposal of human excreta - probably the largest such operation in UNICEF globally - the programme in Northern Iraq advances the view that such “hardware” interventions alone will not bring about the desired improvement in the population's health and particularly children's health. Unless coupled with behavioural development and change towards adopting positive hygienic practices the impact of the hardware intervention will remain incomplete.
The concept of total environmental sanitation encompasses seven main components including: handling of drinking water; disposal of waste water, disposal of human excreta (use of sanitary latrines and safe disposal of child excreta); disposal of garbage and animal excreta; home sanitation and food hygiene; personal hygiene; and community sanitation. In Northern Iraq, UNICEF is supporting a School Sanitation Programme, implemented through the Ministry of Education to motivate positive hygienic behaviours (around the seven components) in primary school children and through them to reach their families. The programme is currently operating in 140 schools and there is demand to expand it to many more.
Additionally, UNICEF's strategy has the objective of reaching women as a vitally important group to the promotion of total environmental sanitation through building alliances with key local and international partners. Partnership with the Kurdistan Women's Union (KWU) allows access to the extensive network the union has throughout the entire region and with WFP, it is possible to reach women loan beneficiaries through literacy classes in 778 villages out of the 4000 villages in the region. Another partnership is being planned with religious leaders to reach men with similar messages.
Action in three governates
The strategy for celebrating WWD 2001 in Northern Iraq covered all three governorates in the region. In Erbil Unicef collaborated with the Kurdistan Women's Union an awareness session on water and health for about 100 of its members. Presentations on the relationship between water and health, the situation of water supply and sanitation in Northern Iraq and on the concept of total environmental sanitation enticed the attending women leaders to come up with many suggestions for collaboration on how to reach women groups with hygiene education messages. As such the event was very useful in facilitating alliance building with such a key and active partner with a network of channels to reach women spanning the entire region.
Schools participation
The Dohuk WES team capitalised on the School Sanitation Programme (SSP) in operation in about 40 schools in the governorate since 2000. Four schools participating in the SSP organised, with UNICEF support, a rally to mark the World Water Day. A one kilometre long file of many rows of about 1000 students followed a route especially selected to reach a large audience of onlookers in residential and commercial areas carrying banners and placards and shouting slogans with messages they have developed with their teachers. The messages focused on water conservation - an issue of prime importance - as well as specific messages on hygiene practices relating to water and health. The rally ended at a cultural centre where an exhibition was organised displaying children's drawings produced as part of the annual SSP competition. The drawings depicted the understanding the school children have developed of the concept of total environmental sanitation in a simple yet meaningful and colourful manner. The Governor of Dohuk inaugurated the exhibition. He delivered a speech to an auditorium full of students, teachers and education officials highlighting the importance of water supply and hygiene, expressing his appreciation of the SSP and asserting his commitment to expanding it to reach all school children and their families.
Good media coverage
The rally and the exhibition including the Governor's speech were well covered by three local TV stations in Dohuk and one satellite station covering the entire region. Additionally, the Dohuk team in collaboration with the largest local TV station organised an excellent panel discussion on key water and health issues. The panel brought together the president of Dohuk University, the top officials of the directorates of Health and Water and Sewerage and officers from WHO and UNICEF in a very informative and credible discussion. The panel discussion was shown in conjunction with coverage of the rally and exhibition for a 90-minute programme aired at prime time as a special commemoration of World Water Day. A similar televised panel discussion was organised with the Ministry of Health in Erbil and aired on local television. In Suleimaniyah one of the two newspapers with the largest readership in the entire region-- “New Kurdistan”- ran a half-page article on the theme of WWD 2001. The article highlighted the significance of WWD, the web of relationships between water and health and the major preventive strategies against water borne diseases, particularly emphasising hygienic practices.
Generating public interest and immediate follow-up
Overall, the events commemorating WWD 2001 in Northern Iraq were effective in generating public interest in the theme of “water and health”. They additionally provided a great advocacy opportunity for UNICEF along with its key partners to highlight existing efforts and initiate new alliances for sanitation and hygiene promotion. An immediate follow-up action for UNICEF will be to consolidate the partnership with the KWU through building the capacity of its frontline cadres to promote sanitation and hygiene as part of their standard activities. They can also take a leadership role in sanitation and hygiene campaigns especially in rural areas. A series of such campaigns (village contact drives) will be piloted in May. As well, KWU and other NGOs will be active partners in the WFP-UNICEF collaboration to reach about 10,000 women in literacy classes with sanitation and hygiene messages. As for the school sanitation programme, the experience this year suggests that it might be effective to synchronise some of the programme's activities and key events (e.g. prize awarding for the drawing competition) with the annual celebration of WWD.
Internal effects
It is important to note that this year's celebration had some interesting internal effects as well. For example, the planning and implementation of WWD events in Dohuk galvanised excellent cross-sectional co-operation between health, education and WES, thanks to the interest and leadership of the WES team in Dohuk. Additionally it helped sway the attitude of the steadfast engineers of the WES team towards such “software” interventions from scepticism to concord. This attitudinal change will facilitate further development of the sanitation and hygiene strategy as an integral part of WES interventions along side the hardware operations. Training in participatory communication and communication for behavioural development and change will be an important ensuing action to consolidate such thinking.
Contact
Noeman AlSayyad
UNICEF
Iraq
E-mail: nalsayyad@unicef.org