I have been a WASH researcher for over two decades, working primarily in Sub Saharan Africa or SSA for short) with a dabble in Central Asia and a little touch down in Latin America. Throughout all my years of being a WASH researcher, I have learned four truths: first, that we cannot address water without also addressing sanitation – the two are inextricably linked. Yet many forget that; how many of us can name the annual date of World Water Day (March 22nd) but can NOT name the annual date of World Toilet Day (November 19th). Second, many will say that water is life but I have learned that water is dignity. I have been privileged to stand with folks in rural villages for whom safe water and a vented pit latrine have only recently been provided and when asked how this has changed their lives, they have no words; instead, they dance, and I dance with them. Third, on a global scale, WASH is quintessentially gendered;women spend over 250 million hours every day fetching water and over 300 hours looking for a place to relieve themselves. And yet, women have little if anything to do with the management or delivery of WASH resources. Fourth, women experience violence related to WASH security through the life course, from the time they are old enough to carry that little jerry can from the water point to the time they take their last breath. I know this not from the academic literature which is typically my go-to source, but from the stories that women tell me when we visit in their villages.
This project funded by REACH has allowed us to do three things. First, to scour the literature to see what we already know about WASH security and GBV – and it is very little. We have however published a paper in the journal of Water Security (Nunbogu and Elliott, 2022) that outlines the four types of violence we uncovered. The first, not surprisingly, is physical violence. This involves violence experienced, for example, at the hand of a husband when the wife has not done her duty of providing enough water for the household. Or at the water point, when women push and shove and perhaps hit their younger queue mates to get to the front of the line to obtain this scarce resource. Sexual violence has been reported when young girls – in order to secure water for the household and to perhaps get to school on time – head out in very early morning darkness to remote well points and find themselves vulnerable to sexual assault. Or the stores I heard from headmasters of schools regarding the men who waiting in the bush for the young girls who had to relieve themselves in the middle of the school day and the bush was their only option. We often minimize the impacts of the third type of violence – the psychosocial violence of stigma and embarrassment when as a growing girl, you have to have your bath in pubic or in the river, or you are taunted by others as you relieve yourself in the bush. Finally, infrastructural violence refers to the lack of access to monetary resources as a result of socio-cultural norms rendering women powerless and without alternatives when there is not enough water in the household, putting them at risk of physical violence from the male head of house.
The second accomplishment of this project was to address WaSH needs and related gender based violence issues at the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Many of us remember where we were when the pandemic was declared by the WHO on March 11, 2020. I was in a room full of global health researchers in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and when the announcement was made, they were all excited – WE were all excited – because it hit us where we live as researchers. Little did we know how this would pan out…But after the initial shock of it all, my first thoughts went to the people I know – the communities I know – living in SSA; how were they supposed to access the water point that was often kilometers away from home if they were under strict lockdowns? How was anyone supposed to constantly wash their hands to stem the spread of the virus if there was not water? With funding from REACH, we were able to mobilize existing partnerships and previously trained research assistants in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda to explore exactly these questions. The results are all in the process of being published in those academic journals I referred to above, that you can look up. But the take home message is: it was bad. Not COVID-19 because the prevalence in these parts of the world was (reportedly) very low (and we can debate the many reasons why that might have been) but because of the unintended consequences of lock downs, restrictions and school closures. Indeed, the major impact on women during this time according to the NGOs working on the ground? Teenage pregnancy. Why? Because girls were no longer is school and school was a safe place.
The third accomplishment was to be able to undertake – with the help of locally trained research assistants – oral histories with the very old women to ask them about WASH and gender based violence across the life course. These women had lived a long time, had seen a lot, and had clear ideas about how things would be different if they were in change. The bottom line? Water is a women’s issue so why aren’t women in charge of management and distribution? Pretty straightforward question, eh?