The world is rapidly urbanising, swelling impoverished urban settlement populations – exacerbating exclusion and inequality in access to WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) services for the poorest and most marginalised children and their families.
As of 2018 an estimated 4.2 billion people, or 55% of the global population, were living in urban areas. A third of them were children, and about 300 million of these children were living in slums – the worst form of informal settlement.
UNICEF’s Global Framework for Urban WASH is based on UNICEF’s experiences in urban WASH programming in over 50 countries. It is structured around three areas of support: sector-level, service-level and user-level support, with suggested entry points and activities for engagement in urban WASH. The Framework also considers three different urban contexts: urban slums, small towns and urban areas in humanitarian and protracted crisis settings, focusing on areas where UNICEF can add value, in line with the organisation’s equity agenda.
