WIN’s Lessons Learned Report captures experiences and challenges faced whilst working on water integrity between 2011 – 2016. The report demonstrates that working to improve water integrity is not always a straightforward matter. Approaching the topic, targeting interventions, interpreting key principles, and prioritizing actions can be considerable challenges.
The lessons outlined in this report highlight how WIN and its partners have faced these challenges, and how we are moving forward to effectively support improvements in water management and WASH services.
Lesson 1: Corruption happens everywhere. Keeping it hidden makes it thrive. Being transparent about it can build trust.
Lesson 2: It is critical to carefully evaluate how far one can go when discussing corruption and only gradually push the limits.
Lessons 3: Being sensitive about the topic means taking into account cultural relativity and using positive entry points to generate discussion and action.
Lesson 4: Prevention is a sign of due diligence: it can build trust with financing partners and ensure effectiveness of projects.
Lesson 5: Concerted action for advocacy and tool implementation is key, even if it is difficult to keep up.
Lesson 6: Political will or top support helps.
Lesson 7: Acting at lower levels and building up momentum for integrity is possible and effective.
Lesson 8: Transparency is not just about opening up the account books.
Lesson 9: Civil society and the media play a key role in independent monitoring and reviews of budgets or service levels.
Lesson 10: Empowered, capacitated regulators can be strong change agents in the fight against corruption.
Lesson 11: Ensuring stakeholder engagement is a slow process but if it is real and multi-directional, integrity work will be stronger.
Lesson 12: Integrity programmes require thorough assessments and context analyses, detailed stakeholder mapping, and quality follow-up.
Download the full report here: