Participants of the  Stakeholders? Consultative meeting have unanimously agreed that Nepal is adequately delivering its commitments made in SACOSAN IV in Colombo however commitments to improve WASH in schools, develop context specific equitable and inclusive sanitation and hygiene programs, develop harmonized monitoring mechanism and adopt participation, inclusion and social accountability mechanisms from planning through implementation has not been delivered in satisfactory level.

The agreement was made in Stakeholders? consultative meeting on SACOSAN IV organized by Jal Sanjaal and FANSA at Trade tower on 3 October prior to 5^th South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN V) to be held in Kathmandu from 21- 24 October 2013. The meeting evaluated the achievements made by Nepal so far in delivering the commitments made during the SACOSAN IV in Colombo, Sri Lanka

.

Highlighting the objectives of the meeting National Coordinator of Jal Sanjaal, Lajana Manadhar said that, the government is presenting the achievements made by Nepal so far in reference to commitments made in Colombo, however unlike other countries Nepal will present a single report incorporating the evaluation made by both government and civil society. The meeting has been organized to develop a consensus through consultation and discussion among the government and civil society to come up with the single voice of Nepal on the evaluation of delivering the commitments by Nepal.

Presenting the evaluation made by the government based on the remarks send by the local bodies, Ramchandra Shah from Department of Water Supply in his traffic light paper presentation told that Nepal has been delivering the commitments exceptionally well except in commitments to improve WASH in schools and developing harmonized monitoring mechanism for which he gave yellow colour meaning we still need to work a lot in the commitment. ?Numbers of toilets and progress in promotion of gender equitable toilets in schools are not satisfactory, and lack of proper indicators and unclear existing indicators has created dilemma in implementing agencies. Hence he suggested that these commitments should be focused in the upcoming days and these commitments should be indicated by yellow colour.

However, presenting evaluation from the civil society Rabin Bastola from WASH RCNN told that Nepal should be giving yellow signal to commitment number 3-context specific equitable and inclusive sanitation and hygiene programs due to lack of concrete and disintegrated data and evidences and lack of delivery of designed programs. Similarly he also suggested that since the numbers of toilets are progressively increasing they should be indicated by green colour as the commitments refer to raising profile of WASH in schools rather than attaining perfect sanitary condition. Meanwhile he opined that since Nepal has not developed proper monitoring mechanism and has not adequately incorporated issues of inclusion and social accountability in planning through implementation these should be indicated by yellow colour. ?Both these commitments should be focused in future and at present should be indicated by yellow colour? he stressed.

Participants agreeing to Rabin?s argument on inadequate indicators for the evaluation of the progress made causing more dilemmas and told that there is still some confusion among the implementing agencies regarding the evaluation procedure and uniformity in implementation procedure is hard to find. While some of the participants argued that the issues of inclusion of inclusion are more or less satisfactory and there are examples of it, and suggested to look for it rather than indicating with yellow colour.

 However Nawaraj Khadka Coordinator of SACOSAN V secretariat clarified that the yellow colour does not mean that no progress has been made in delivering the commitments but it signifies that the some initiatives have already been taken but these are inadequate. ?Also if we use green colour then it signifies that we are adequately progressing and we shift our priorities to other issues so it?s better that we indicate recommended commitments with yellow colour so that we prioritize those in upcoming days?, he clarified with suggestion.

From the meeting it was concluded that Nepal is doing exceptionally well in delivering the commitments and adequate progress has been made in 9 out of 13 commitments while it was proudly shared that Nepal?s One National body  (National WASH coordination Committee)for coordinating WASH initiatives could be lesson for all other countries.

The green, yellow and red colors indicate on track, progress but insufficient and not in track respectively.