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World Water Day will be celebrated on March 22nd. This year, the day will highlight sanitation challenges as part of the International Year of Sanitation. Improving water and sanitation services for poor households is a priority for the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA).

In rural areas, such as central Vietnam, the lack of clean piped water exposes poor communities to water-borne diseases such as dysentery, typhoid fever, and cholera.

In urban areas, like the slums of Kampala in Uganda, many poor households don’t have access to the main water network because the connection charges are too high.

GPOBA recently approved grants for output-based aid (OBA) to help improve access to water services in both Vietnam and Uganda.

Altogether, GPOBA has signed OBA grant agreements totaling $31.7 million for 10 water and sanitation projects in countries in Africa, East Asia, and Latin America, and another 11 grant agreements are in the pipeline.

GPOBA has also approved over $3 million in technical assistance for water and sanitation projects.

Under the OBA approach, local service providers are for the most part paid only after delivery of the agreed output. This makes them more accountable and helps target the subsidies to the poorest households.

For more information on GPOBA projects, visit the GPOBA Activities page.

You can also consult a working paper on “Regulation of Water and Sanitation Services: Getting Better Service to Poor People” on our Working Paper Series page.

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The international observance of World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.

Visit the World Water Day website to learn about events planned for March 22.

Please also visit the World Bank external website for a feature story on The Economic Impacts of Poor Sanitation.