Please find all the information needed to register for the upcoming Global WASH Cluster (GWC) Annual Meeting Satellite Events to be held online from 26th-30th April 2021 from 13h00-17h00 CEST each day. This will provide a unique opportunity to hear from more than 30 partners, academia, practitioners, and actors involved in humanitarian WASH as well as other sectors.

A total of 18 collaborative sessions ranging from a variety of topics such as localization, gender, capacity development, innovations, and many more sessions gravitating around humanitarian WASH and coordination.

Audience
Humanitarian and Development Actors, Public Health and WASH practitioners, WASH Cluster Coordination Platforms, GWC partner organizations are all welcome. Note that this is a public event – registration is free.

Who We Are?

The GWC is a partnership of 77 organizations which governance (for more details see: working arrangements & roles and responsibilities) is structured around a series of core bodies:

The Strategic Advisory Group (SAG)
The Cluster Advocacy and Support Team (CAST)

What We Do

Why the cluster approach?
In 2005, the Humanitarian Reform Agenda reviewed the effectiveness of emergency response in order to enhance predictability, accountability and partnership. The cluster approach was one of the elements introduced by this reform, with a clear mandate for improving coordination in emergencies. The Global WASH Cluster (GWC) was formed in 2006, building upon the successes of an existing Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) humanitarian sector working group. The current Global WASH Cluster Strategic Plan and its Mid-term-Review that sets out the priorities decided by Partners will be reviewed and monitored to take into consideration the contextual changes associated with the Transformative Agenda of the Humanitarian Reform.

The Transformative Agenda
In 2010, the responses to the Haiti earthquake and Pakistan floods exposed a number of weaknesses and inefficiencies in the international humanitarian response. The Tranformative Agenda, driven by the Inter-agency Standing Committee, aimed at transforming the response of the humanitarian community through stronger leadership, more effective coordination structures and improved accountability for performance and to affected people. This built on the process of humanitarian reform from 2005 by focusing on the impact of change, rather than the process of implementing change. In the framework of the Transformative Agenda, the basics of cluster coordination have been reviewed and summarized in a reference guide for practitioners to facilitate the work through which humanitarian outcomes can be improved.

The core functions of a cluster at the country-level are:
1. Supporting service delivery
Provide a platform to ensure that service delivery is driven by the agreed strategic priorities
Develop mechanisms to eliminate duplication of service delivery
2. Informing strategic decision-making of the HC/HCT for the humanitarian response
Needs assessment and response gap analysis (across sectors and within the sector)
Analysis to identify and address (emerging) gaps, obstacles, duplication, and cross-cutting issues
Prioritization, grounded in response analysis
3. Planning and strategy development
Develop sectoral plans, objectives and indicators that directly support realization of the HC/HCT strategic priorities
Apply and adhere to existing standards and guidelines
Clarify funding requirements, prioritization, and cluster contributions for the HC’s overall humanitarian funding considerations (e.g. Flash Appeal, CAP, CERF, Emergency Response Fund/Common Humanitarian Fund)

4. Monitoring and reporting the implementation of the cluster strategy and results; recommending corrective action where necessary

5. Contingency planning/preparedness/capacity building

6. Advocacy
Identify advocacy concerns to contribute to HC and HCT messaging and action
Undertake advocacy activities on behalf of cluster participants and the affected population

The Global WASH Cluster Strategic Plan

The Global WASH Cluster Strategic Plan (GWCSP) sets out the priorities decided by Partners for 2016 to 2020. It describes how the GWC intends to meet the commitments associated to the Transformative Agenda. This plan is for all its members who are expected to contribute to the achievement of the plan and its objectives through participative engagement and partnership, both at global and country levels.

It was developed through an extensive consultative process (using on-line survey, key informant interviews and document review) undertaken during the whole 2016 with a wide range of stakeholders, and consolidated after a final consultation with the GWC partners at the 21st GWC meeting held in Kathmandu on November 22nd and 23rd, 2016. for more details, please visit

Field Support Team (FST)
Technical Working Groups (TWiGs)