Advancing Sustainable Development Goals Through Humanitarian WASH Interventions: Evidence, Gaps, and a Transformative Agenda for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene in Crisis Settings

Abstract

Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene remains among the most acutely unmet needs in humanitarian crises globally, yet the relationship between humanitarian WASH interventions and Sustainable Development Goal achievement has been treated in both policy discourse and academic literature as incidental to the primary emergency mandate rather than as a strategic priority. This article addresses that gap through a systematic narrative review of 87 peer-reviewed studies, intergovernmental reports, NGO programme evaluations, and framework documents published between 2020 and 2025, synthesising evidence on how humanitarian WASH interventions contribute to, constrain, or create pathways toward SDG achievement across health (SDG 3), education (SDG 4), gender equality (SDG 5), equitable access (SDG 10), climate action (SDG 13), and governance (SDG 16). Four analytical arguments organise the synthesis. First, humanitarian WASH constitutes a structural SDG investment whose returns extend across multiple goal dimensions when designed with deliberate SDG alignment. Second, the humanitarian-development nexus remains the central governance gap preventing WASH interventions from generating durable SDG progress beyond the immediate crisis period. Third, climate change is fundamentally reshaping the scale, character, and SDG implications of humanitarian WASH need in ways that existing SDG monitoring frameworks do not yet adequately reflect. Fourth, localization, focusing community knowledge, local actors, and context-adaptive governance, represents the most consequential systemic change available for improving both WASH quality and SDG alignment in humanitarian settings. Drawing on these four arguments, the review proposes the Humanitarian WASH-SDG Integration Framework (HWSIF), synthesising evidence across five strategic domains: health systems strengthening, gender-transformative programming, climate-adaptive infrastructure, community governance, and Leave No One Behind targeting. The article concludes with six recommendations directed at humanitarian actors, national governments, UN agencies, bilateral donors, and the research community, constituting an agenda for transformative action toward the full realisation of humanitarian WASH programming as a structural investment in sustainable development.

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