Humanitarian crises and sustainable sanitation: lessons from Eastern Chad

Latrine at Farchana refugee camp, Eastern Chad. Photo: Flickr/Sustainable sanitation

How important is sanitation during a humanitarian crisis? Why is it important to explore ecological and sustainable sanitation? Groupe URD looks at the case of Eastern Chad, an example of a major long-term crisis. From an acute emergency in 2003, the crisis has gone through a number of phases. The appropriateness of aid mechanisms is currently being questioned, with a particular focus on sanitation. Sustainable sanitation can help to improve the quality of life of refugees and IDPs as well as local populations. From this perspective, what lessons from Eastern Chad could be useful in other contexts?

Groupe URD concludes that the long-term success of alternatives to conventional sanitation in Chad, as elsewhere, does not depend on the application of particular technologies: it depends principally on the participation of the future users (from the design to the follow up) both in the building of the facilities and the re-use of products. Rather than reproducing a design, it is important to understand the principles of ecological sanitation in order to be able to adapt them to a particular context. The key ideas to be retained from the Chadian experience – which can be applied in many other contexts – are participation, awareness-raising, pilot projects, training and lesson sharing.

Read the full article by Julie Patinet of Groupe URD and Anne Delmaire of Toilettes du Monde

Source: Humanitarian Aid on the Move newsletter, no. 9, March 2012

Africa: Jimmy Carter spearheads final drive to eradicate Guinea worm disease

Former US president Jimmy Carter says US$ 100 million is needed to finally eradicate Guinea worm disease. The UK has pledged a third of this amount if other donors are prepared to cough up the rest.

Dr. Donald Hopkins, vice president for Health Programs at The Carter Center, shows South Sudanese children how to prevent Guinea worm disease when they visit their local water source. Photo: Carter Center/ L. Gubb

Since the Carter Centre took up the cause in 1986, the disease has been reduced by more than 99 per cent.  The majority of the remaining cases (98%) are from South Sudan, while Mali and Ethiopia have each reported less than 10 cases so far in 2011 and there was an isolated outbreak in Chad.

In 1995 Carter personally negotiated a six-month ceasefire between northern and southern Sudan, in a successful attempt to reach remote villages where Guinea worm disease was endemic.

Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis or dracontiasis) can be prevented through heath education, the provision of cloth filters for drinking water and larvicides. The Carter Center’s goal is to stop transmission of the disease worldwide before 2015 and ensure World Health Organisation (WHO) certification within three years. This would make it the second human disease, after small pox, ever to be eradicated in human history.

Related web sites:

• Carter Center – Guinea worm
• World Health Organization – Dracunculiasis
• Wikipedia – Dracunculiasis

Related news: Health policy: global assembly approves three WASH resolutions, E-Source, 14 Jul 2011

Source: Sarah Boseley, Guardian, 05 Oct 2011 ; DFID, 05 Oct 2011

Africa: political stability and country leadership key to water and sanitation progress

Political stability has heavily influenced progress in improving access to water supply and sanitation services with low-income stable countries outperforming low-income fragile and resource-rich countries.  ”This breaks with the common perception that access to sanitation and water increases with GDP”, says Senior Financial Specialist Dominick de Waal, lead author of a new report [1] by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP).

The report, commissioned by the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW),  maps progress  in water supply and sanitation of 32 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. WSP carried out the country studies together with the African Development Bank in close partnership with UNICEF, WHO, and the 32 governments.

Chad: Lake Chad’s water woes

Finding clean water is as difficult for people living on the islands in Lake Chad as it is for their neighbours along the shores. “Since 1963, the surface area of Lake Chad has decreased from approximately 25,000 sq km to 1,350 sq km,” according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

“For the 2,000 residents here, there is only one water well, built by a church two years ago,” said David Penabeye, director of a health clinic on the island of Fitiné, who told IRIN that almost all the children have worms. Onshore, children use donkey carts to carry jerry cans filled with water for bathing, cooking and drinking.

UNEP noted that “Since 1963, the lake has shrunk to nearly a twentieth of its original size, due both to climatic changes and to high demands for agricultural water.” The UN Food and Agriculture Organization said the lake was also shallower than it has ever been.

Half of Chad’s estimated population of around 10 million has access to drinking water from “improved” sources, including covered wells, springs or pipes.

However, 83 percent of rural households – which encompasses almost all of island life – defecate in open places where they may be getting their drinking water, according to the UN 2010 update on sanitation and clean water.

“The water helps nourish us with fish, but it is also making us sick,” said Abdou Adam, the top traditional leader on Fitiné. He chose clean water as one of the island’s biggest needs, along with a working health centre and schools.

Source: IRIN, 14 Jun 2010

Chad: Banging pots and pans to end charcoal ban

On 23 January [2009] in some Chadian cities day broke with the sound of citizens banging together pots and pans.
Prohibited by the authorities from demonstrating in the streets, Chadians banged their utensils from inside their homes to protest the government’s ban on charcoal, which has people in a panic, burning roots, furniture and anything they can find in order to boil water and cook.

[...] The protest idea came from the Coalition of Parties for the Defence of the Constitution, an umbrella group of opposition political parties. Clanging was heard in the capital N’djamena and the protest was reportedly widely observed in Chad’s third largest city, Sarh, in the south. Chadians planned to carry out the banging for three consecutive days.

When people tried to march in N’djamena earlier [in January 2009] — against the charcoal policy and the high cost of basic goods — police and military dispersed the crowds, beating some demonstrators, a woman who was among the protesters told IRIN.

The charcoal ban – which government officials say is essential to fight desertification – has highlighted the need for alternative household fuels in the country, much of which is rocky desert. Residents and aid workers say just about the entire population uses charcoal as household fuel. A consumers’ rights association is urging the government to promote renewable energy use.

But this group and others are calling for a suspension of the ban until alternatives can be made available.

For now Chadians are burning whatever they can find.

“I am using plants such as palm fruits,” N’djamena resident Nangali Helene told IRIN on 22 January. “But they make us ill. They do not burn properly and they give off a horrid smoke and smell.”

…We understand the need to protect the environment but we find it bizarre that the measures are so sudden and so brutal…She said: “Last night we started burning the beams from the roof of our outhouse. Our children are suffering. We cannot even wash them with warm water in the morning. The government needs to know what things are like for us.”

Currently the morning temperature in N’djamena averages around 17 degrees Celsius.

“Women giving birth cannot even find a bit of charcoal to heat water for washing,” Céline Narmadji, with the Association of Women for Development in Chad, told IRIN [on 16 January 2009].

Source: IRIN, 24 Jan 2009 ; IRIN, 16 Jan 2009

Chad: insecurity leaves thousands at risk of waterborne disease, aid workers say

Diarrhoea and other deadly waterborne illnesses threaten some 28,000 Chadians in [the] eastern town [of Dogdore] , after armed attacks – including the theft of a water pump – forced out the last aid workers running already scaled-down operations.

UN aid officials fear that people will begin to flee Dogdore if aid operations do not resume there soon. [...] About 24,500 displaced Chadians live in Dogdore, along with some 4,000 local residents, according to the UN. [...] The last remaining aid workers, with the group Action Against Hunger (ACF), pulled out in late November 2008.

[...] Armed bandits on 21 November stole a motorised water pump that was serving some 70 percent of the population. [Now] many people in Dogdore have been forced to turn to unsafe water. “People are digging [makeshift] wells into the wadis [riverbeds],” said David Cibonga, head of OCHA in Abeche.”

Source: IRIN, 10 Dec 2008

Chad: Water and Wood Shortages Worsen for Refugees

Every morning soon after sunrise, Fatne Abdaraman walks a short distance across the Iridimi refugee camp in eastern Chad hauling a twenty-litre plastic jug. She lines it up along with other women’s containers at the water distribution point, then awaits her turn to draw her daily allotment of one of Central Africa’s scarcest resources, one that underpins ongoing conflict in the region.

Fair access to water and firewood are motivators in rebellions in Chad, Central Africa and the Darfur region of Sudan, according to Alain Lapierre, a manager with aid group CARE International.

Indeed, these two things are never far from the minds of Abdaraman, the other 18,000 North Darfuri refugees in Iridima and the original residents of the nearby town of Iriba. Both vital resources were in short supply even before the Darfur conflict sent 250,000 refugees streaming into eastern Chad. Now they’re being consumed faster than Mother Nature can replenish them — and shifting weather patterns are taking their toll, too.

Despite desperate efforts by international aid groups, local authorities estimate the wood will run out next year. Water might soon follow.

Read more: David Axe, IPS, 26 Jun 2008