9AWW: Enhancing Policy Environment and Governance for Reaching Safely Managed Sanitation in Kenya

This session was designed to allow in-depth discussions and reflect on enabling environments for accelerating safely managed sanitation (SMS) through strengthening national policies as well as governance among government and non-government partners in the region, based on Kenya's experiences in developing the National Sanitation Management Policy (NSMP) and other strategies providing an enabling policy framework. The development of the NSMP is a significant policy milestone. The NSMP was developed based on the African Sanitation Policy Guidelines (ASPG). It addresses this historical relegation of the sanitation function by giving it the prominence it deserves in Kenya’s development agenda. It also provides the institutional basis for fulfilling Kenya's commitments towards achieving SDG Target 6.2. The session introduces the lessons drawn on what future policy processes could borrow from Kenya’s experience and ASPG-guided processes, reflecting on how various stakeholders engaged in developing the NSMP. Moreover, national-level efforts for strengthening the enabling environment, aligned with and designed to support the implementation of the NSMP, will be introduced, such as a strategy for scaling up safely managed on-site sanitation options and monitoring framework and a national SMS workshop that UNICEF supports.