WASH and Water Governance
The most vulnerable women, men and children in the world suffer from dirty and scarce water. Helvetas makes a difference: In 2024, 1,071,965 women and men gained access to clean drinking water, sanitation facilities, and good hygiene practices. Together with Helvetas, they installed solar-powered wells and latrines and learned important hygiene rules.
What you'll find on this page:
Why water matters →
What we do →
What we offer →
Team of water experts →
Our water projects →
Why water matters
If you live in a high-income country, you probably consume at least 150 liters of clean water per day for cooking, cleaning and washing. That is approximately two full bathtubs.
While many of us take water for granted, women and girls in poor communities often spend several hours a day fetching water on their heads and backs. Despite significant progress in recent years, one in ten people around the world lack access to basic water services, and one in five lack access to basic sanitation. Many illnesses in low-income countries are caused by dirty water and poor hygiene. Access to water and sanitation is not only essential for health — it is also recognized as a human right.
The UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development recognizes water as key to sustainable development. Access to safe water, basic sanitation and good hygiene practices creates opportunities for improved education, health and economic development. It also tends to impact most positively on women, since in low-income countries women generally bear the burden of domestic water management. Furthermore, improving water resource management is crucial for equitable development, climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, sustainable agriculture and the prevention of conflicts, reinforcing why access to clean water and sanitation is so vital.
Nafissatou Bagana, midwife at the Sirarou maternity ward, Benin
Helvetas' commitment to water and sanitation
The human right to water and sanitation is at the center of our work at Helvetas. We support poor and disadvantaged people in their efforts to build wells and latrines, but we also go beyond this. We promote a comprehensive approach that includes distributing water resources fairly, managing water supply services in a sustainable manner, efficiently irrigating fields and improving hygiene practices. Since 2021, over 2,600,000 people have gained access to safe drinking water through the support of Helvetas.
Helvetas works with local partners to strengthen local governments in making water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services available for all. We help create spaces where local governments, civil society, and the private sector coordinate their activities to ensure services reach the most disadvantaged people – and do so in an effective and accountable way.
We analyze and seek to understand key behavior change determinants such as social norms. Our interventions to improve water quality, handwashing and latrine use build on this understanding.
We join hands with our sustainable agriculture and climate change colleagues to find water security solutions. Systematic stakeholder dialogues help us contribute to a fair and equitable distribution of water resources, reinforcing our broader commitment to fair resource allocation mentioned above.
We strengthen the capacity of key local actors in developing national strategies, improving water governance and creating innovations, thereby complementing our efforts to promote sustainable service management and long-term access to water and sanitation.
What we offer in the fields of water and sanitation
- Fifty years of experience in the water sector
- Expertise in strengthening local governance to improve WASH service delivery to the most disadvantaged women and men in rural and urban areas
- Sustainability assessments of WASH services
- Advice on designing behavior change interventions that effectively improve water quality, handwashing and latrine use
- Support in developing sanitation interventions in rural and semi-urban areas, and in designing household water treatment and safe storage, including supply chains for water treatment products
- Implementation of approaches that contribute to water security such as water use master plans, water buffering (recharge, retention, and reuse) and water stewardship
- Support in institution building, including strengthening monitoring and evaluation systems and in advocacy and policy development
Contact our team of water experts
Our multilingual advisory team offers wide-ranging thematic expertise and has in-depth experience in navigating complex processes. Based in Switzerland and abroad, we work in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
