Quality assurance system

Set up a quality assurance system for the response

Ensuring that the WASH partners provide to the affected populations a humanitarian response complying with minimum standards of quality is a priority for the humanitarian WASH community. The GWC defines a good quality response as follows: 

• Appropriate and relevant - communities and people affected by the crisis should have access to water and sanitation infrastructure and services, as well as receive key hygiene messages and items that meet their needs and be culturally appropriate;
• Impartial - the targeted communities of WASH programmes should be based on a sound vulnerability criteria ;
• As participatory as possible - communities and people affected by crisis should know their rights and entitlements, have access to information, participate in decisions that affect them, and have the possibility to provide feedback to WASH partners;
• Effective and timely - the WASH response should be realistically designed, sized and phased so that it is delivered in a timely manner, in line with the capacity of the sector;
• Strengthens local capacities and avoids negative effects - WASH partners, should to the maximum extent possible, build their response on local capacities and work towards improving the resilience of communities and people affected by crisis.

A WASH Humanitarian response can be defined by a combination of response inputs and outputs, as per the following diagram:  

To ensure a high quality response, the WASH Coordination platforms should:

1. Ensure response inputs are adequate
2. Guarantee the monitoring of the five quality pillars (see diagram above) in the response outputs, and take corrective actions when necessary

A humanitarian WASH response Quality Assurance System consists in the set up of mechanisms in both preparedness and response phases to guaranty the achievement of these two responsibilities: