Providing improved sanitation services can contribute directly to a number of the Millennium Development Goals and
the alleviation of global poverty. This contribution can be maximized through the development of appropriate national
sanitation policies to enable the implementation of national strategies and programmes. Only then can the scale of the
sanitation need be effectively addressed. This paper presents the process and findings of research carried out in Nepal
and Ghana to test guidelines for assessing national sanitation policies. It explains how the guidelines were applied and
where they were modified to suit the context of the case study countries. Findings from the research look to both inform the
future application of the guidelines and ongoing development of national sanitation policies. The paper is one of a series
of outputs developed on the basis of the research project