The 2014 Sanitation and Water for All High Level Meeting: what does it tell us about how developing countries are tackling inequalities?

Clarissa Brocklehurst

doi:10.3362/2046-1887.2014.032

The 2014 Sanitation and Water for All High Level Meeting: what does it tell us about how developing countries are tackling inequalities?

The 2014 High Level Meeting (HLM), held on 11 April 2014 in Washington, DC, was the largest meeting the Sanitation and Water for All partnership has yet convened. It was attended by 42 developing countries, 12 donors, and four development banks, as well as senior representatives from UN agencies and civil society. Twenty developing countries were represented at the level of their minister of finance, and in addition, 35 ministers responsible for water and sanitation attended. At SWA HLMs, developing countries and donor partners present commitments designed to overcome the barriers holding back progress towards universal access. In April 2014, 43 countries prepared and tabled more than 300 commitments. An analysis was carried out to examine responses to the call for commitments that specifically targeted inequalities, revealing that 26 countries, 60 per cent of those that tabled commitments, made 46 commitments that could be considered to address inequalities, either through direct intervention or strengthening of the policy and institutional environment.

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