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ENSURING WOMEN’S & GIRLS’ ACCESS TO SAFE TOILETS IS A “MORAL” IMPERATIVE - UN
Lines Napolo in front of her latrine in Mali Water Aid Photo
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/11/20121118101316953460.html
19 November 2014 – With one out of three
women worldwide lacking access to safe toilets, it is a moral imperative to end
open defecation to ensure women and girls are not at risk of assault and rape
simply because they lack a sanitation facility, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged today on
World Toilet Day.
In his message
for the Day, commemorated
annually on 19 November – with this year’s theme Equality, Dignity and the
Link Between Gender-Based Violence and Sanitation – Mr. Ban said that
addressing the sanitation challenge requires a global partnership and called on
Member States to “spare no effort to bring equality, dignity and safety” to
women and girls around the world.
But although it is the poor who overwhelmingly do not
have toilets, everyone suffers from the contaminating effects of open
defecation, so everyone should have a sense of urgency about addressing this
problem.
“A staggering 1.25 billion women and girls
would enjoy greater health and increased safety with improved sanitation.
Evidence also shows safe and clean toilets encourage girls to stay in school,”
the UN chief said.
In all, some 2.5 billion people worldwide
do not have adequate toilets and among them 1 billion defecate in the open – in
fields, bushes, or bodies of water – putting them, and especially children, in
danger of deadly faecal-oral diseases like diarrhoea.
In 2013, more than 340,000 children under
five died from diarrhoeal diseases due to a lack of safe water, sanitation and
basic hygiene – an average of almost 1,000 deaths per day.
But women who do not have access to
adequate toilets are especially at risk, since they are vulnerable to shame and
potential violence when they seek a place to defecate.
Ensuring that women have access to proper
sanitation and toilets is especially crucial as countries work to formulate a
sustainable development agenda for the period beyond the year 2015, Mr. Ban
urged.
“Communities must be supported as they
strive to become open defecation-free. Advocacy efforts must step up and taboos
must be broken,” the Secretary-General added. These are the objectives of the UN Call to Action on Sanitation
to mobilize global, national and community efforts to improve hygiene, change
social norms and eliminate open defecation by 2025.
In its remarks on the Day, the UN
Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that slow progress
on sanitation and the entrenched practice of open defecation among millions
around the world continue to put children and their communities at risk.
“Lack of sanitation is a reliable marker of
how the poorest in a country are faring,” said Sanjay Wijesekera, head of
UNICEF’s global water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes.
“But although it is the poor who
overwhelmingly do not have toilets, everyone suffers from the contaminating
effects of open defecation, so everyone should have a sense of urgency about
addressing this problem,” he added.
The call to end the practice of open
defecation is being made with growing insistence as the links with childhood
stunting become clearer. India, with 597 million (half the population)
practising open defecation, also has high levels of stunting.
“The challenge of open defecation is one of
both equity and dignity, and very often of safety as well, particularly for
women and girls,” Wijesekera noted. “They have to wait until dark to relieve
themselves, putting them in danger of attack, and worse, as we have seen
recently.”
In May, the hanging of two teenage girls in
Uttar Pradesh who had gone out after dark to defecate caused international
shock and dismay, and highlighted the security issues involved in open
defecation.
UNICEF’s Community Approaches to Total
Sanitation addresses the problem at the local level by involving communities in
devising solutions, and has led to some 26 million people across more than 50
countries abandoning the practice of open defecation since 2008.
Eighty-two per cent of the 1 billion people
practising open defecation live in just 10 countries: India, Indonesia,
Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Niger, Nepal, China, and Mozambique. The
numbers of people practising open defecation are still rising in 26 countries
in sub-Saharan Africa, though they have declined in Asia, Latin America and the
Caribbean. In Nigeria, numbers of open defecators increased from 23 million in
1990 to 39 million in 2012.
Globally, some 1.9 billion people have
gained access to improved sanitation since 1990. However, progress has not kept
up with population growth and the Millennium Development Goal target on
sanitation is unlikely to be reached by 2015 at current rates of progress.
The inter-governmental Open Working Group
on the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals have recommended that the new
goals include a target of achieving adequate and equitable sanitation and
hygiene for all and ending open defecation by 2030.
Several events were organized at
Headquarters to mark the Day, including a press conference with Deputy
Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, who has spearheaded efforts around the
initiative, including towards ending open defecation.
Mr. Eliasson said there are so many reasons
to get involved in this issue. Firstly, sanitation is the most lagging goal of
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The issue of sanitation has wide
implications as it touches on economic development, waste management and the
ever-increasing scarce water resource. Managing sanitation makes good economic
sense, he said, adding that one dollar investment in sanitation equals to four
dollars in economic growth.
“And then basically, it’s a matter of human
rights…and to me it is also a matter of dignity,” Mr. Eliasson said. This
year’s focus on women and sanitation is especially important. In some 20
countries, there are horrible examples of girls that go out in the field get
attacked, rapped and even hanged.
“This has been a bit of a personal commitment,
I actually saw children die in front of me in Somalia in 1992 of dehydration
and diarrhoea,” he said.
Many times in schools there is only one
hole in the back and that is reserved for boys. Girls are too ashamed to go and
so it becomes impossible for them to go to school. Investing in water and
sanitation has horizontal benefits.
Singapore’s Representative to the United
Nations, Karen Tan, who has also led efforts on the initiative, said that
people don’t like to talk about toilets.
“Pooing” and “peeing,” she said, are
extremely taboo, but hopefully, even if people laugh and snicker, Governments
will make steps to take action and raise awareness about this very serious
issue.
There are many critical aspects to this
Day, including education, equality, dignity, and human rights. Particularly, it
is important to pay special attention to the challenges that women and girls
face when they do not have access to toilets and proper sanitation.
Chair of UN-Water, Mr. Michel Jarraud said
“we need to talk about open defecation – no matter how taboo it may feel.”
Ending open defecation is a crucial way to
speed up development. “We have to work in every possible way to address the
vulnerabilities and challenges faced by women who lack access to toilets and sanitation.
In a number of countries, there is evidence that girls do not go to school if
there are no toilets,” he said, echoing Mr. Eliasson.
“We need to close the gap between the ones
who have and the ones who do not have,” he said, urging the need to put water
and sanitation at the heart of the post-2015 development agenda.
World Toilet Day was established by the
“Sanitation for All” resolution,
adopted by the UN General Assembly in July 2013, designating 19 November as
World Toilet Day. The Day is coordinated by UN-Water in collaboration with
Governments and relevant stakeholders.
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