The purpose of the national capacity assessments is to provide recommendations for use by senior decision makers, related to human resources (HR) requirements in the drinking water, sanitation and hygiene promotion sectors. The assessments focused on water supply and sanitation with the hygiene promotion component im-plied through the review of human resources issues in the social development components. The studies focused on identifying shortages (numbers) and gaps (skills and competencies) necessary to attain a) the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and b) full service coverage by 2015 using a standardised methodological framework to collect the data.