Background
End Water Poverty (EWP) envisages an engaged, emboldened and united civil society coalition employing a range of context-specific, community-led strategies. EWP launched Claim Your Water Rights on International Human Rights Day in December 2019 with the aim of mobilising and emboldening civil society to enforce the international human rights framework at national and grassroots levels.
Claim Your Water Rights enables members to advocate on a range of different issues related to the human rights to water and sanitation – whether it’s accessibility, affordability, availability, acceptability or quality of service. EWP will also support action that strengthens other related human rights – such as environmental rights, health rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, and civil and political rights. Claim Your Water Rights aims to support members’ long-term advocacy objectives or to catalyse campaigning action on new or emerging issues. This means members can adapt their focus and tactics to their local or national context while working in global solidarity under one banner.
The Claim Your Water Rights campaign was conceptualised and realised through a process of co-creation between the secretariat and the task team. The task team is a member-led working group that ensures the coalition’s global Claim Your Water Rights campaign remains rooted in local realities.
Roles and mandate
The task team:
- Shapes the overall direction of Claim Your Water Rights by advising on and approving the campaign’s strategy and key processes, including granting criteria and reporting requirements.
- Meets on a bi-monthly basis to share updates, provide guidance to keep the campaign rooted in local realities, and build solidarity.
- Informs the secretariat of local/national challenges and opportunities, advocacy priorities, and campaign progress.
- Shares insight, learning and expertise on the safety and efficacy of different rights claiming strategies in different country contexts.
- Offers support, encouragement, and practical advice to members working on the campaign.
- Reviews campaign documents and resources including graphics, communications, toolkits, granting guidelines, EWP progress reports, and the overarching strategy.
- Helps the secretariat identify issues arising from local and national campaign actions to amplify at regional/global fora and processes.
- Suggests ways to connect the campaign to other aspects of EWP’s work, contributing to the coalition’s peer exchanges, member mobilisations, international interventions, and biennial general assembly.
- Represent the campaign externally where opportunities arise to promote Claim Your Water Rights at national, regional, or international fora, such as conferences and panel discussions.
Relationship between the task team and secretariat
The task team provides varied perspectives and valuable guidance to the secretariat, informing the strategic direction of the coalition’s core campaign and holding the secretariat accountable to members. However, the responsibility for developing key documents and processes lies primarily with the secretariat. It is then the task team’s responsibility to review and approve these documents and processes. For example, it is the secretariat’s job to lead the creation of the overarching campaign strategy (i.e. by writing the first draft and then soliciting feedback).
Relationship between the task team and steering committee
The steering committee is a governance and decision-making body that provides strategic guidance, oversight and support to EWP’s secretariat. The steering committee’s primary role is to advise on and approve the coalition’s overall strategic direction. This includes approving workplans, budgets, and fundraising among other key governance processes. While the task team supports the planning, processes and practical delivery of EWP’s core campaign, the steering committee is ultimately responsible for reviewing and approving the Claim Your Water Rights campaign strategy as well as notable campaign proposals from the task team.
Relationship between the task team and grant review committee
While it is the task team’s responsibility to inform and refine the granting application and review process, it is not within the task team’s remit to review other members’ individual grant proposals and decide which members receive Claim Your Water Rights funding. However at least two members of the task team will be periodically selected to the grant review committee. The task team must nominate representatives to participate in the grant review committee. This should be done with the secretariat’s guidance to ensure regional balance on the committee. To be eligible, the task team member must not apply for a grant during that round of funding.
Expectations
Members of the task team are expected to:
- Attend meetings held every two months, participating actively by sharing information, guidance, and support.
- Provide updates on their organisation’s advocacy actions, and/or campaign progress.
- Undertake preparatory work for meetings where required e.g. considering key questions on the agenda in advance of meetings.
- Work collegially, cooperatively, and collaboratively with the secretariat and fellow task team members.
- Address action points between meetings.
- Provide strategic direction on key processes and documents.
- Actively share campaign activities and achievements with their network.
- Serve on the grant review committee where required
- Advance the Claim Your Water Rights campaign and promote the principles of sustained, context-specific, community-led advocacy at local, national, and regional level.
- Practice the human rights principles of participation, transparency, accountability, and non-discrimination and equality.
Task team members may be removed if they:
- Fail to attend three consecutive meetings without reasonable explanation.
- Consistently fail to address action points.
- Change employer as they may no longer be members of EWP and therefore ineligible to serve on the task team.
- Undertake any activities harmful to the reputation or cause of the campaign and coalition.
- Fail to adhere to the human rights principles. Discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, class, caste or religion will result in expulsion from the task team and coalition.
Ways of working
Timing and location of meetings
Meetings are held every two months over Zoom. Meetings are usually scheduled for 90 minutes, though the duration can be extended or shortened depending on the agenda and task team members’ availability. Meetings will generally start between 1-2pm UTC to enable attendance from members working across different time zones. The secretariat or the task team may request additional ad hoc meetings throughout the year if required.
The secretariat should organise an online meeting between task team and steering committee representatives during the first quarter of each financial year to ensure coordination between the two groups. A task team representative will also be invited to attend at least two of the steering committee’s quarterly meetings in a year to share the work of the task team. Budget allowing, the task team should meet face-to-face once every two years to coincide with in-person steering committee meetings.
Format of meetings
The secretariat organises and chairs task team meetings, circulating agenda, minutes and actions. While the secretariat drafts and shares the meeting agenda, task team members are strongly encouraged to shape the agenda and suggest topics for discussion. There will be regular slots for the Secretariat to invite Claim Your Water Rights grantees who are not task team members to meetings to share updates on their campaign challenges or successes.
In between meetings, discussion and approval on urgent issues continues via the Claim Your Water Rights Google Group ([email protected]). This enables the secretariat to seek approval or sign-off on matters that do not require convening the task team.
Task team recognition
Task team representatives’ profiles should be displayed on the ‘Governance’ page of the coalition’s website. The task team’s contribution to the coalition’s core campaign should be recognised through acknowledgements in Claim Your Water Rights publications and EWP’s biennial reports.
Institutional support
The task team receives institutional support from EWP in numerous ways. These include
- Training and workshops on relevant skills.
- Technical advice and guidance on campaign strategies.
- Visibility of their work through EWP’s website, social media, toolkits, and reports.
- Opportunities to highlight their organisation’s work at EWP exchanges and to participate in external events.
- Networking opportunities and facilitation of partnerships with funders.
- Letters of recommendation and certificates of commendation.
The above list is not exhaustive nor applied cumulatively. If EWP secures significant additional funding for the Claim Your Water Rights campaign, the task team should receive sustained financial support so their organisation is well-placed to continuously champion and implement the campaign.
Selection process and composition
Selection process
The secretariat appoints members to the task team via calls for expressions of interest sent to all members. If there is little interest the secretariat can identify gaps either in geographic representation or thematic knowledge before approaching members to fill those gaps.
The task team should be composed according to the following principles:
- The task team must reflect the diversity, gender-balance, and global spread of EWP’s membership. At least one member from each of EWP’s different geographic constituencies must be represented on the task team.
- The task team should also have a range of perspectives with members who have experience implementing different rights claiming strategies and who have different areas of expertise relating to the campaign’s eight common themes (for example ‘corporate accountability’ or ‘feminism and women’s rights’).
- The secretariat should appoint no more than three representatives from the same sub-region (i.e. South Asia, Central America, or West Africa).
- The secretariat is entitled to invite non-EWP members to participate in task team meetings to offer a fresh perspective or external expertise on the campaign.
- The task team should have a minimum of eight members to ensure good participation and a maximum of 16 members to ensure meetings run smoothly and on-time. 50% of task team members must be present at a meeting to reach quorum.
Length of service
Task team members should serve on the task team for three years before their position is reviewed and a mutual decision on whether or not to extend their term for another three years is taken with the secretariat. Task team members can resign from their role at any time during their term.