An open drainage ditch in Ankorondrano-Andranomahery, Madagascar. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 2 2015 (IPS)

When the United Nations hosted a panel discussion last year urging its partners to “break their silence” on open defecation, Singapore’s deputy permanent representative Mark Neo was outspoken in his characterisation: “Open defecation is a euphemism. What we are talking about is shitting in the open.”

And over one billion people worldwide do so every day.“This is a crucial step towards achieving better health, reducing poverty and ensuring environmental sustainability for the most marginalized people in the world.” -- Chris Williams

In India alone, there are nearly 600 million people (out of a total population of over 1.2 billion) without access to sanitation, according to the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) based in Geneva.

Currently, about 35 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, fall into that category, including Niger, Sierra Leone, Mali, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Guinea, Liberia, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Nepal, Angola, Pakistan, Myanmar, Cambodia, Congo, India and Laos, among many others.

A new study by the Geneva-based Global Sanitation Fund (GSF), released Tuesday, says 2.5 billion people, or 40 percent of the global population, lack access to decent sanitation, including more than a billion who defecate in the open.

Still there is progress: nationally-led sanitation programmes supported by the GSF have enabled 4.2 million people to have improved toilets; seven million people and more than 20,500 communities to be free of open-defecation; and eight million people with handwashing facilities.

“These results prove that we are moving closer to our vision of a world where everybody has sustained sanitation and hygiene, supported by safe water,” said Chris Williams, executive director of WSSCC.

“This is a crucial step towards achieving better health, reducing poverty and ensuring environmental sustainability for the most marginalised people in the world.”

The study says diarrheal disease, largely caused by poor sanitation and hygiene, is a leading cause of malnutrition, stunting and child mortality, claiming nearly 600,000 under-five lives every year. Inadequate facilities also affect education and economic productivity and impact the dignity and personal safety of women and girls.

The governments of Australia, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom have contributed to the GSF since its establishment by WSSCC in 2008.

Close to 105 million dollars has been committed for 13 country programmes, and aimed at reaching about 36 million people.

The GSF says the results have been achieved due to the work of more than 200 partners, including executing agencies and sub-grantees composed of representatives from governments, international organisations, academic institutions, the United Nations and civil society.

One of the strongest success factors in the GSF approach is that it allows flexibility for countries to develop their programmes within the context of their own institutional framework and according to their own specific sanitation and hygiene needs, sector capacity and stakeholders, says a press release.

This implementation methodology is used to reach large numbers of households in a relatively short period of time and is vital for scaling up safe sanitation and hygiene practices.

The GSF has been described as ” a pooled financing mechanism with the potential to further accelerate access to sanitation for hundreds of millions of people over the next 15 years.”

Between 2013 and 2014 alone, the GSF reported an almost 90 percent increase in the number of people living open-defecation free in target regions of 13 countries across Africa and Asia.

During this same period, the GSF also supported a 55 percent increase in the number of people with access to improved toilets in those same areas.

The United Nations system has identified global funds as an important tool to enable member countries to achieve their national development targets, including those for sanitation and hygiene.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

In Nepal, 38 percent of the population still defecates in the open. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2014 (IPS)

At the height of his election campaign last October, Narendra Modi, India’s Hindu nationalist leader, briefly set aside his spiritual aspirations when he told a surprised audience that economic development should take precedence over religion.

“Toilets before temples,” pleaded Modi, the newly-elected prime minister of India, a country which has been in the throes of a perpetual sanitation crisis, and where open defecation is an all-too-common sight in villages and urban slums.

As chief minister of the state of Gujarat, Modi oversaw the installation of some 76,000 lavatories in schools “so that more girls could study,” according to an article in the Economist last month.

"The situation [...] is most difficult in India where there are nearly 800 million people without basic sanitation, and 600 million of those are still practising open defecation." -- Barbara Frost, chief executive at the London-based WaterAid
As if taking its cue from Modi, or by happy coincidence, the United Nations Wednesday formally launched a global campaign to help improve access to toilets for the 2.5 billion people without basic level sanitation.

“It is time to talk about open defecation,” said U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, “and to discuss the facts, the consequences and the solutions.”

And it is time to talk about the many countries around the world where community members, local leaders and politicians are taking positive action to end this practice, he added.

According to the United Nations, about 82 percent of the 1.1 billion people practising open defecation live in just 10 countries: India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Niger, Nepal, China and Mozambique.

By 2025, the practice of open defecation must be totally eliminated, the United Nations has vowed.

Barbara Frost, chief executive at the London-based WaterAid, told IPS South Asia still has the most people without basic sanitation, more than one billion in 2012, although sub-Saharan Africa also has a large number, just fewer than 644 million.

“The situation by sheer numbers is most difficult in India where there are nearly 800 million people without basic sanitation, and 600 million of those are still practising open defecation,” she said.

In sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria is bucking the trend and has seen large increases in open defecation between 2000 and 2012.

“Many African nations are seeing the number of people without basic sanitation drop, but in Nigeria this is increasing,” Frost said.

Chris Williams, executive director at the Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), told IPS open defecation is a serious health risk in the world’s poorer countries, spreading disease, effecting economic productivity and claiming lives unnecessarily.

“People who do not have access to a hygienic toilet and a place to wash their hands are exposed to an array of faecally transmissible and potentially deadly diseases that with improved sanitation are easily preventable,” he said.

“That is why we have to make equitable access to improved sanitation a key priority in the post-2015 development agenda,” Williams added.

He also said sanitation and hygiene are motors which drive health, and social and economic development around the world.

“An environment that lacks sanitation and clean water is an environment where achieving other development goals is an impossible dream,” declared Williams.

Mark Neo, deputy permanent representative of Singapore, a country that spearheaded the move to declare Nov. 19 ‘World Toilet Day’ at the United Nations, told IPS the lack of basic sanitation profoundly impacts key constituencies like women and girls.

For example, without proper toilet facilities, women and girls constantly risk rape and sexual assault while defecating in the open, and pubescent girls drop out of school because of the lack of privacy, he said.

Accordingly, for its commemoration of World Toilet Day this year, Singapore is planning an event focusing on the unique and particular challenges of open defecation for women and girls.

“There are taboos within taboos, so we want to focus on the unique vulnerabilities of women without access to basic sanitation and toilets,” he added.

Neo said the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of providing basic sanitation is lagging behind other MDGs and is unlikely to be achieved by 2015.

Therefore, it is critical that sanitation remains prominent in the post-2015 development agenda both as a stand-alone goal and mainstreamed into other goals under the agenda.

The U.N.’s campaign against open defecation will run through the end of 2015.

Mother, an independent advertising agency in the United Kingdom, has given time and expertise on a pro bono basis to develop campaign ideas and materials, according to the United Nations.

Where there is open defecation, pathogens spread quickly, causing diarrhoea, cholera, bilharzia (caused by freshwater worms) and other diseases, according to WaterAid.

More than 1,400 children die each day of diarrhoeal diseases linked to a lack of safe water, basic sanitation and good hygiene.

Williams told IPS the sanitation movement supports millions each year to build a toilet for their household, assisted by programmes such as the WSSCC’s Global Sanitation Fund and development partners such as the World Bank and the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

“Together we are helping rural communities to stop open defecation and wash their hands of disease spread by poor sanitation once and for all.”

Between 1990 and 2012, open defecation decreased from 24 percent to 14 percent globally. South Asia saw the largest decline from 65 percent to 38 percent, according to WSSCC.

But there are stark disparities across regions, between urban and rural areas, and between the rich and the poor and marginalised.

The vast majority of those without sanitation are poorer people living in rural areas. Yet, progress on sanitation has often increased inequality by primarily benefitting wealthier people, according to WSSCC.

WSSCC’s Global Sanitation Fund (GSF) has helped support 2.7 million people using toilets, enabled 3.7 million people in more than 14,400 communities to live in cleaner environments free of open defecation and helped 4.2 million people wash their hands with soap.

The GSF has committed 86 million dollars in 11 country programmes worldwide, according to WSSCC.

(END)