GWC Helpdesk
Contact GWCAs an alternative, CLTS can appear fundamentally mismatched with post-emergency and fragile states contexts: the core principle that sanitation hardware should not be subsidised can conflict with urgent need, and with what some will view as a contravention to the right of human assistance. Affected populations have often lost all their wealth, and are traumatised, physically weak, insecure, and at the point of greatest dependency on the aid community. Furthermore, the least able members of the community may not be able to rely on help from others when their community structure and its social capital have been devastated. Yet as time progresses, priorities and human capacities change, sanitation itself will become a key consideration for health and well-being, and conditions for CLTS self-action often improve. Instead of attempting to categorise learning of CLTS applicability under set types of disaster, recent studies have suggested that a ‘typology of situations’ affecting both the lives of people caught up in the emergency, and the overall enabling environment, has the most important influence on whether or not a demand-led sanitation solution, such as CLTS, could be successfully adopted. A simplified, broad typology is used to present the key learning points on the applicability of CLTS in three categories: displaced people living in camps, displaced people living in host communities, and people living in settled villages in conflict affected areas, or undergoing recovery/rehabilitation. Within each of these three key situation typologies there will be sub-typologies / situations which will influence the effectiveness of the CLTS approach.