Children investigate their community's newly improved toilets, one of UNOCI's “quick impact projects” (QIPS) which supported the rehabilitation of schools and toilets in Abidjan. Credit: UN Photo/Patricia Esteve

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 30 2015 (IPS)

As most developing nations fall short of meeting their goals on sanitation, the world’s poorest countries have been lagging far behind, according to a new U.N. report released here.

The Joint Monitoring Programme report, ‘Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and MDG Assessment’, authored by the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO), says one in three people, or 2.4 billion worldwide, are still without sanitation facilities – including 946 million people who defecate in the open.“We cannot have another situation where we appear to be succeeding because the situation of the comparatively wealthy has improved, even as millions of people are still falling ill from dirty water or from environments that are contaminated with faeces." -- Tim Brewer of WaterAid

“What the data really show is the need to focus on inequalities as the only way to achieve sustainable progress,” said Sanjay Wijesekera, head of UNICEF’s global water, sanitation and hygiene programmes.

“The global model so far has been that the wealthiest move ahead first, and only when they have access do the poorest start catching up. If we are to reach universal access to sanitation by 2030, we need to ensure the poorest start making progress right away,” he said.

Pointing out the existing inequities, the report says progress on sanitation has been hampered by inadequate investments in behaviour change campaigns, lack of affordable products for the poor, and social norms which accept or even encourage open defecation.

Although some 2.1 billion people have gained access to improved sanitation since 1990, the world has missed the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target by nearly 700 million people.

Today, only 68 per cent of the world’s population uses an improved sanitation facility – 9 percentage points below the MDG target of 77 per cent.

Still, the world has made “spectacular progress” in water, Jeffrey O’Malley, Director, Data, at UNICEF’s Research and Policy Division, told reporters Tuesday.

In 2015, 91 percent of the global population used an improved drinking water source, up from 76 percent in 1990, while 6.6 billion people have access to improved drinking water.

The total without access globally is now 663 million, almost a 100 million fewer than last year’s estimate, and the first time the number has fallen below 700 million.

As the MDGs expire this year, the goal on water has been met overall, but with wide gaps remaining, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The goal on sanitation, however, has failed dramatically. At present rates of progress it would take 300 years for everyone in Sub-Saharan Africa to get access to a sanitary toilet, said the report.

Tim Brewer, Policy Analyst on Monitoring and Accountability at the London-based WaterAid, told IPS the MDG goal on water was met largely because of those who were easiest to reach.

“The poorest are often still being left behind. What we need to do in the new U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), now under negotiation, is to make sure that progress for the poorest is made the headline figure.”

“We cannot have another situation where we appear to be succeeding because the situation of the comparatively wealthy has improved, even as millions of people are still falling ill from dirty water or from environments that are contaminated with faeces,” he noted.

Brewer said monitoring is key: “We need to measure basic access for the poor, as well as measuring other indicators such as whether water is safe and affordable, and whether wastewater is safely treated.”

“This is the only way to make sure we reach everyone, everywhere by 2030 and hold governments accountable to their promises,” he argued.

In countries like Japan and South Korea, according to published reports, sanitation is far beyond a basic necessity: it has the trappings of luxury with piped in music, automatic flushing, and in some cases, scenic window views — even while millions in developing nations defecate openly in nearby rural jungles or on rail tracks (with their bowel movements apparently being coordinated with train schedules, according to a New York Times report.)

The practice of open defecation is also linked to a higher risk of stunting – or chronic malnutrition – which affects 161 million children worldwide, leaving them with irreversible physical and cognitive damage.

“To benefit human health it is vital to further accelerate progress on sanitation, particularly in rural and underserved areas,” says Dr Maria Neira, Director of the WHO Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health.

Asked if it would be realistic for sanitation goals to be rolled into the proposed SDGs with a target date of 2030, UNICEF’s Wijesekera told IPS that an even more ambitious sanitation target is suggested for the new SDG agenda – to eliminate open defecation and achieve universal access to sanitation.

“I think the goal of achieving universal access to sanitation by 2030 is possible, but only if we start focusing on the poorest and most vulnerable right now (rather than waiting for the wealthiest to gain access first, as has historically been the case).”

He said: “We can also learn from the successes of the past 25 years, and especially the last 15. A number of countries have made rapid gains during the MDG era.’

For example, he pointed out, Ethiopia has reduced open defecation rates by 64 percentage points and Thailand has closed the gap in access between the richest and the poorest.

This shows what is possible when countries recognise the importance of tackling inequalities in access to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), thus unlocking wider benefits in health, nutrition, education and economic productivity, he noted.

Asked how the sanitation problem can be resolved, Wijesekera told IPS: “Sanitation is not rocket science; most developed countries take it for granted.”

“But our experience on the ground in developing countries shows that it is not just a question of governments investing money and technology. It is also about changing ordinary people’s attitudes and behaviours, and this takes time,” he said.

Sanitation can best be addressed by countries establishing and investing in people and systems at a local level to change people’s behaviours, and to get the private sector engaged in providing affordable and good quality products and services for the poor.

This, he said, needs to be led by countries themselves, and donors, international organisations and the private sector all have a role in providing financing and expertise.

He also said there is a growing awareness of the importance of sanitation as a foundation for human and economic development.

World leaders – from the U.N. Secretary-General, to the President of the World Bank, to the Prime Minister of India – are all talking about it.

“We need to translate this high level political support into action in order for all people to have access to what is theirs as a human right: clean drinking water and adequate sanitation,” said Wijesekera.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

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

Women village councilors in Penakota, a village in southeast India, go out into a field to relieve themselves, as there are no toilets in their workplace. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
MALLAMPETA, India, Jul 4 2014 (IPS)

Nine months after she was elected head of her village council, 36-year-old Krupa Shanti has overseen some significant changes in this rural outpost of Mallampeta, 570 km away from Hyderabad, capital of the southeastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

“Since I took over, 300 people have got their Below the Poverty Line (BPL) ration cards and are receiving subsidised food, and another 200 people have received their voter cards,” Shanti told IPS.

But the village’s first woman leader has not been able to change the one thing that is closest to her heart – the sanitation for the women in her community.

“I have not received the necessary funds to construct a single toilet,” Shanti said, adding that she was extremely frustrated that she and her female colleagues are still forced out into the bushes and fields to relieve themselves.

“I have political rivals now whom I defeated in the election. What if they follow me to the field or the bush and attack me there?" -- Swaroopa Chamtla, a council woman in the village of Chowtapalli
Six hundred km away, in the village of Chowtapalli, Council Head Sandhya Rani complains of losing precious work time due to poor sanitation.

Rani’s office, which she joined in August 2013, is in an old, dilapidated building that has no running water and no sanitation facilities.

“Every time I want to use a toilet, I have to rush home,” she told IPS, barely concealing her anger. “How can a person work in such conditions?”

Still, Rani is luckier than her colleagues; of the nine women on the 10-member village council, she is the only one to own a toilet at home and is spared the shame of having to defecate out in the open.

Many of the women in Chowtapalli had hoped becoming council members would lead to a life of dignity, a dream they now find crushed.

Lack of toilets is a common problem across India, a country of 1.2 billion people that has the dubious distinction of denying adequate sanitation to nearly 60 percent of its citizens.

According to a recent report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), India also tops the list of countries with the highest number of people (58 percent of the population including women and girls) who defecate in the open.

The 2011 census found that nearly 70 percent of rural households, as well as over 18 percent of homes in towns and cities, don’t have toilets.

Census data from the same year showed that more people in India had cell phones (59 percent of households) than toilets (47 percent), a figure that also accounted for dry, open-pit latrines.

The situation is particularly worrying for rural women politicians, who say the cumbersome process of having to relieve themselves in public is prohibiting them from carrying out their duties.

Many are also alarmed by the spate of violent attacks on women across rural India, who are stalked by sexual predators and raped, molested or mutilated when they venture out into the fields at night.

One such incident on May 28 stunned the entire nation, when images of two teenage girls from the village of Katra Shadatganj (228 km southwest of New Delhi), who were raped and hung from trees, began to make the rounds on social and print media.

Since then, at least four other similar cases have been reported in the same region. It subsequently emerged that each of these women came from homes that did not have toilets, and were accosted while attempting to relieve themselves at night.

Now, local councilwomen are beginning to fear for their own lives as a result of inadequate sanitation facilities.

Thotakurra Kamalamma, a politician from the eastern coastal village of Kodi Thadi Parru, says her local council has never had a toilet. Though it didn’t deter her from participating in local politics before, the Katra Shadatganj incident has shaken her to the very core, leaving her fearful of suffering a similar fate, she told IPS.

“I have a daughter. If anything happens to me someday, who will look after her?” asks Kamalamma, who has decided to resign from her post.

Chowtapalli Councilmember Swaroopa Chamtla is also considering quitting – something her husband is also asking for.

“I have political rivals now whom I defeated in the election,” she told IPS. “What if they follow me to the field or the bush and attack me there? It’s happening everywhere, isn’t it?” she said.

The government of India currently provides building materials at subsidised costs, as well as cash grants, to rural families for constructing toilets.

But according to Krupa Shanti, one of the first women to attempt to make the down payment of 10,000 rupees (about 180 dollars) even the government rate is cost-prohibitive for many rural families, in a country where an estimated 30 percent of people live below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day.

She also alleged that officials in city government offices are indifferent to the plight of women in villages, and therefore delay approval of funds for toilets.

Independent studies partially support her views; according to a 2011 World Bank report, government funds for sanitation in India were woefully inadequate.

The Bank also found that the country lost an estimated 53.8 billion dollars in 2006 alone as a result of poor sanitation, a figure equivalent to about 6.4 percent of the country’s GDP.

While bodies like the United Nations have called repeatedly for increased participation of women in local-level politics, little attention has been given to the specific challenges posed by a widespread lack of sanitation.

Aparajita Ramsagar, an independent sanitation consultant and former project director for SEWA Bharat, a union of self-employed women, says that during 2010-2011 the government increased reservation of seats for women in village councils from 33 to 50 percent.

“The aim of the increased reservation was to have more women join the political process. But [the government] had not envisaged the increased sanitation needs of women in the councils,” Ramsagar told IPS.

Most officials, however, refute these allegations. According to Narsimha Rama Murthy, senior engineer at the sanitation department of Visakhapatnam, the largest city in Andhra Pradesh, delays in funding are due to lengthy processes governing state finances, rather than an indifference on the part of officials.

“We have to inspect and check the situation before approving petitions [for funding]…One has to follow a process,” he told IPS.

Furthermore, problems arising from a lack of toilets cannot be solved without simultaneously tackling the twin problem of the water supply in rural India.

Sukhantibai Partiti, who heads the Handitola Village Council in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, has been trying for six years to implement the government-sponsored Total Sanitation Campaign (also known as Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan), which aims to eradicate open defecation by 2017 – to no avail.

She says this is largely due to limited access to clean water.

“For nearly six months of the year, we depend on a single pond in the village for all our water needs,” the second-time village head, who still does not have a toilet in her own home, told IPS.

“But, while we can carry a few pots of water for cooking and drinking, it is not possible to carry buckets of water to flush a toilet,” she added.

Disappointed at the lack of opportunities available to local politicians, she has decided not to run for a 3^rd term in office; she says the indignity of running around looking for a place to relieve herself has made the job untenable.

(END)

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)