Facilitating access to clean and safe drinking water to conflict-affected communities in Idleb The Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) 2019 findings show that Idleb is one of the governorates with the highest WASH needs, with only 13% of surveyed households having access to piped water and 45% relying on untreated water trucking. Those who have access to piped water often face service interruption due to power cuts, and damaged or unrepaired water stations. In GOAL’s areas, 33% of households reported relying on alternative or supplementary water sources alone due to lack of access to or frequent outages of piped water services. This, coupled with poor sanitation and hygiene services, increase the risk of negative copying mechanisms and incidence of preventable diseases. 

GOAL Syria has implemented a large-scale WASH Programme in Idleb Governorate since 2014 with funding mainly from the Department for International Development (DfID). The approach of this programme is to invest in the capacity of existing water systems to facilitate sustainability of programme outcomes. Specifically, GOAL supports four Water Units and some 65 sub-ordinated water stations with management capacity support, as well as operational / maintenance assistance including rehabilitation, minor repairs, and water treatment and quality monitoring. This approach has proved to be effective in enabling over 575,000 people from the resident and displaced communities to access clean and safe drinking water at household level and has been well received by local communities based on beneficiary community feedback that GOAL has received to date. 

Fifteen of these water stations were funded through a smaller grant under DfID’s Emergency Response Mechanism, which ended in March 2019, leaving more than 150,000 people without access to reliable water sources. Through this application for funding, GOAL would like to continue supporting the capacity of 14 water stations that have been prioritised for support in order to meet the increased water demand in five sub-districts hosting high numbers of displaced populations: Maaret Tamsrin, Idleb, Armanaz, Qourqueena, and Jisr ash-Shugur. 

GOAL will provide operational and maintenance support, conduct minor rehabilitation and repair works, deliver fuel for water pumping, ensure water treatment and quality monitoring and support water station wages to support capacity for meeting the increasing water demand due to displacement. GOAL will complement these activities with community-based hygiene promotion as findings by the WASH Cluster point to a risk of negative coping strategies that lead to modifying hygiene practices. A total of 156,940 people are expected to directly benefit from the proposed project, which also promises a long-term benefit to strengthen local capacities to meet the water needs of the targeted populations. This project will be complemented by GOAL’s larger Syria Response Programme addressing a multitude of life-saving basic needs through a multi-sectoral and integrated programming approach, encompassing food security, WASH and emergency support, all using a variety of cash-based assistance and in-kind modalities. 

In addition to an extensive technical capacity and track record in WASH programming, GOAL Syria has an established presence in the target areas, benefits from good relations with local communities, including Water Units and Local Councils, enjoys high community acceptance, and possesses a breadth of operational and contextual knowledge and understanding generated from regular needs, risk and threat assessments, programme and security monitoring, and feedback received from a range of stakeholders. GOAL Syria is an active member of the WASH Cluster for North West Syria where GOAL co-ordinates with other WASH actors in the region.