XUNICEF Quarterly June 2021

RWSS in three countries

by Leo Goulet

UNICEF began its large-scale assistance to Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (RWSS) programmes in Nepal and Bhutan in 1973, and Vietnam in 1980. I worked with the UNICEF-assisted RWSS Programme in Nepal from 1973 to 1980, Bhutan from 1973 to 1977, and Vietnam from 1980 to 1985. Programmes in each of the three countries evolved in directions that were appropriate to the conditions that prevailed in each.

While the conditions were similar in Nepal and Bhutan, the situation in Vietnam was quite different in many ways. The main challenge for RWSS in Nepal was – and still is – finding ways to deal with the mountainous nature of most of the country, which makes access to villages difficult. The same is true, on a more limited scale, in Bhutan. Though the Vietnamese authorities in the early 1980s – five years after the war – were still focused on rehabilitation, UNICEF assistance was directed at long-term development, which included approaches and methods that were as yet largely unfamiliar to the authorities.

As is often the case, and for a variety of reasons, governments tend to prioritize water supply over sanitation, and this is the main reason why RWSS programmes generally start off with assistance to water supply, which then serves as a means of introducing support to sanitation later on. Such was the case in all three of these countries. Nepal and Bhutan had yet to undertake activities focused on sanitation in rural areas on any significant scale, while Vietnam had for some time been promoting the importance of rural sanitation, at least in the northern part of the country.

Click on this link to download Leo’s report which describes the development and implementation of UNICEF-assisted RWSS programmes in Nepal, Bhutan and Vietnam from 1973 to 1985.

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