Realizing the Right to Sanitation in Deprived Urban Communities: Meeting the Challenges of Collective Action, Coproduction, Affordability, and Housing Tenure

Abstract

There are serious institutional challenges associated with low-cost sanitation in deprived urban communities. These include a collective action challenge, a coproduction challenge, a challenge of affordability versus acceptability, and a challenge related to housing tenure. This paper examines these challenges, revealing both the importance of community-driven sanitation improvement and its difficulties. The nature of the challenges, and the means by which two successful community-driven initiatives have overcome them, suggest that while recognizing the human right to sanitation is important this should not be taken to imply that typical rights-based approaches are the appropriate means of realizing this right.

Determinants of quality of shared sanitation facilities in informal settlements: case study of Kisumu, Kenya

“…When users are in agreement, it is possible and easier to organise for collective action to ensure that shared facilities are of acceptable quality. McGranahan [24] also highlights the importance of collective action in sanitation by noting that when there is collective action, it becomes possible to solve local sanitation challenges.…”

“…In urban areas, a household’s benefits from sanitation depend largely on the actions of others [24, 25] and the CPR management principles are a possible avenue to an in-depth understanding of group actions influencing shared sanitation quality. The aim of this study was thus twofold: To examine the quality of shared sanitation facilities in informal settlements, and to use the CPR principles to investigate the determinants of shared sanitation quality.…”

Strengthening the Human Right to Sanitation as an Instrument for Inclusive Development

“…This is because the challenges of human rights realisation and human development are not confined to the legal framework (Arts, 2014;McGranahan, 2013;Obani & Gupta, 2014b;Sosa & Zwarteveen, 2016). However, there is no comprehensive scholarly analysis of whether and how the HRS addresses the drivers of poor sanitation (see 3.4).…”

“…Scholars further propose that the HRS can address environmental sustainability simultaneously (for instance, Feris, 2015) and that addressing the challenges of the poor inevitably requires renegotiating the political context (for instance, McGranahan, 2013). Since the concept of inclusive development (ID) calls for social, ecological and relational inclusiveness (see Gupta, Pouw & Ros-Tonen, 2015), I adopt ID as an overarching or guiding norm for the HRS in my thesis.…”

“…The participation of the local population can uncover local traditions and practices which may be adapted at low cost to address poor sanitation (McGranahan, 2013). However, participatory approaches without human rights safeguards can be subject to the power structures in communities and still exclude the marginalised and vulnerable who do not participate in the political/policy making process, like residents in informal settlements.…”