Assessing national sanitation policy for effectiveness: lessons from Nepal and Ghana

Providing improved sanitation services can contribute directly to a number of the Millennium Development Goals and the alleviation of global poverty. This contribution can be maximized through the development of appropriate national sanitation policies to enable the implementation of national strategies and programmes. Only then can the scale of the sanitation need be effectively addressed. This paper presents the process and findings of research carried out in Nepal and Ghana to test guidelines for assessing national sanitation policies. It explains how the guidelines were applied and where they were modified to suit the context of the case study countries. Findings from the research look to both inform the future application of the guidelines and ongoing development of national sanitation policies. The paper is one of a series of outputs developed on the basis of the research project.