Accountability and advocacy interventions in the water sector: a global evidence review

PASGR’s Accountability for Water(A4W) consortium which includes; Oxfam Water Witness International, KEWASNET, Shahidi wa Maji, WaterAid and Water Integrity Network (WIN) published its first A4W paper.  

This paper provides a global review of evidence on the outcomes of accountability and advocacy interventions for improved water and sanitation service delivery, water resource management (WRM) sector governance, and the factors which influence their performance. Mapping current knowledge will help guide the community of practice, policy, and research working to strengthen water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) service delivery systems. We summarize the state of the evidence, key insights, and implications. Available evidence is relatively limited (151 papers) and is skewed towards India and East Africa (c. 50%), water service delivery (62%), and social accountability monitoring (54%). Most included articles (80%) associate accountability and advocacy with positive outcomes for sector performance. Positive outcomes are achieved through, for example: improved operational maintenance; access to data; representation and inclusion; political will; changes in policy, law, and process; new investment; and organisational performance. Impact is less frequently reported (32%) and attribution of impacts to interventions is a recurrent challenge. We identify 28 factors that determine the interventions’ performance. These are used to populate a theory of change for accountability and advocacy interventions. The results of the review are important for those working on water sector system strengthening. They suggest the potential of accountability interventions to accelerate delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on WASH, and provide an organising framework to strengthen intervention design and delivery, and future research.