National Strategy for Rural Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene 2011-2025.

The National Strategy for Rural Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene is a strategy with a multi-sectoral approach. The strategy The strategy covers the national territory and applies to the period from 2011 to 2025. It defines the water supply, sanitation and hygiene services to be made available to people living in rural areas and the institutional arrangements and the financial, human and other resources needed to provide these services. Five strategic objectives are set: 1) Access to sustainable improved water supply services; 2) Access to improved sanitation; 3) Hygiene behavior change; 4) Development and operation of means to achieve sustainable services; 5) Sector financing.
The document seeks to make agriculture more productive and sustainable. It takes into special account the sustainable use of water resources. In particular it stipulates that water resources should not be overexploited by all users (not just domestic) and abstraction should not exceed the natural recharge of the resource. Use of groundwater for irrigation can have a serious impact on the availability of the resource. The water resource should be protected from pollution, in particular from poor sanitation.
The strategy aims at reducing rural poverty. Improved water supply and sanitation services are directly relevant to priorities for reducing poverty. In particular, all sectoral strategies focus on having a positive impact on reducing poverty. Very poor, or underserved, areas should be targeted for investment and attention. The links between poverty and water supply and sanitation are shown in Figure 6.
Furthermore, the strategy seeks to enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural systems. The strategy is focused on access to water supply services and improvement of infrastructures. Actions are envisaged to prepare the community to manage the construction, operation and maintenance of water supply services.
The strategy also seeks to increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters. Component 11 of Strategic objective 4 concerns climate change and disaster risk reduction and management.
One of the guiding principles of the strategy is the accountability of the public sector. The aim is to strengthen accountability, and make all levels of administration transparent. All organizations and people in the sector are accountable for their actions on multiple levels: socially, financially, technically and environmentally.