Series: Guides for Integrated Rural Access Planning and Community Contracting in the Water and Sanitation sector

Guides for Integrated Rural Access Planning and Community Contracting in the Water and Sanitation sector

The ILO Employment Intensive Investment Programme (EIIP) has been using the Integrated Rural Access Planning (IRAP) and Community Contracting (CC) tools for some years in order to plan and execute public works infrastructure in several sectors and levels of government. After having conveniently adapted and updated these tools by including an inter-cultural and gender-based approach, they have proven to be valid and effective for the Water & Sanitation Sector (W&S) as concerns their application among dispersed rural and indigenous populations and therefore the ILO considers that they can be applied in different national and local contexts.

One of the characteristics of how both tools have been adapted to the W&S sector has been the formulation and inclusion of a consultation process with indigenous populations under the framework of Convention 169. The adaptation carried out stems from the experience in Paraguay, and has also taken into account the achievements of other IRAP processes in countries such as Cambodia, the Philippines’, India, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, Nicaragua and Panama. This has also been the case of Community Contracting processes fostered in countries such as Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Madagascar, Mali, Nias, Pakistan, Peru, Somalia and South Africa.

How the adaptation process was developed is presented in a series of three documents:

1. Guide No. 1: Conceptual Guide for an Integrated Rural Access Planning and Community Contracting in the Water and Sanitation Sector.

2. Guide No. 2: Development of integrated rural access planning processes in the water and sanitation sector.

3. Guide No. 3: Community contracting to execute public works and manage services.

The purpose of this series of guides is to contribute to the development of the Water and Sanitation Sector (W&S) in different local and national dispersed rural populations. Consequently, the adapted and updated IRAP tool should be integrated and increasingly applied in W&S projects and programmes at a global level and the Community Contracting methodology should be adapted and updated in order to be used in sectoral and local government programmes and projects in the context of Rural Economies integrated into the IRAP, beyond the water and sanitation sector.