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The Recipe for Success: How policy-makers can integrate water, sanitation and hygiene into actions to end malnutrition [EN/PT]

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Executive Summary

In this report we analyse the approaches governments and donors are taking to cross-integrate nutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) within their nutrition and WASH national policies and plans. The report aims to provide a ‘recipe’, or toolkit, to stimulate debate and discussion of the options and opportunities to bring together WASH and nutrition policies and programmes.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a transformative agenda. To achieve them will require links between goals and aspects of sustainable development, and between domestic and international actions.

Multi-sectoral interventions are essential to address each of the underlying determinants of malnutrition, which include: WASH; agriculture; care practices; health; education; social protection; and other socio-economic factors. Improving any one of these underlying determinants in isolation is unlikely to significantly reduce stunting and wasting if other direct and underlying determinants are not also improved.

Comprehensive integration of different sectors under a multi-sectoral umbrella is not always possible, so ensuring key sectors are nutrition-sensitive is also crucial. To be considered nutrition-sensitive and to have a sustained impact on nutrition, sectoral plans and programmes should incorporate specific nutrition goals and actions.

Existing guidelines and practical tools are useful for integrating nutrition and WASH at programme and project levels. However, to transform these into large-scale investments and impact, governments must mainstream nutrition considerations into national policy frameworks and institutional structures.

Nutrition policies and plans should include specific objectives and interventions of key contributing sectors such as WASH.

Likewise, inclusion of the right nutrition priorities and incentives in WASH policies will foster and support multiplication of nutrition-sensitive initiatives.

Although some countries and donors are making important progress towards more effective collaboration between WASH and nutrition actors, more action is urgently needed if the World Health Assembly (WHA) global nutrition targets and SDGs are to be met. This will require national governments and donors, and both nutrition and WASH actors, to shift mindsets; develop ambitious policies and plans; create effective coordination mechanisms and flexible funding; and share lessons and experiences globally.