Epic
Times, UNESCO, Nov 18, 2012
Aid agencies
and international groups are using this year's World Toilet Day to highlight
the risks to women and children from poor sanitation.
Since
2001, November 19 has marked World Toilet Day, drawing attention to issues of
toileting and sanitation worldwide. The United Nations says more than 2.7
million people die each year due to lack of sanitation, with almost 2,000
children dying each day from unsanitary conditions.
World Toilet Day
- More than 2.7 million people
die each year due to lacking sanitation
- Most of those who die are
under five years old.
- Each year, children miss a
total of 272 million school days due to water-borne or sanitation-related
diseases.
- Approximate 1.25 billion
women and girls lack safe sanitation
- Only 1 in 3 people worldwide
have access to suitable toilet facilities.
- More than 1 billion people
still defecate in the open.
- In her latest report to the
UN General Assembly, Catarina de Albuquerque, the United Nations Special
Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, has
called for the elimination of inequalities in access to water and
sanitation.
She's
told Radio Australia's Cconnect Asia program the problem extends beyond the
right to sanitation, to other rights including health,education , work and the
right to lead a life in dignity.
"It
is a crisis that we are facing, and since sanitation is a taboo issue, it's
something dirty that we want to hide, we don't want to talk about it, we don't
want to talk about it," she said.
"So
if we don't talk about and if we make a taboo around it, obviously it's very
difficult for governments to prioritise it in their policy and address this
problem."
It is a
crisis that we are facing, and since sanitation is a taboo issue, it's
something dirty that we want to hide, we don't want to talk about it, we don't
want to talk about it.
Catarina de Albuquerque, United
Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and
sanitation. The
United Nations says a lack of access to toilets remains an important source of
global inequality, with poor sanitation almost exclusively a burden of the
poor.
It says
lacking sanitation not only made poor people sick; it also shrank their already
limited possibilities by forcing them to stay away from school and work. Each
year, children miss a total of 272 million school days due to water-borne or
sanitation-related diseases.
"Each
time I go on a mission for the UN, I always visit a school, and I always talk
with the girls, and not having sanitation - not having girls' only toilets -
means after they reach puberty, they don't go to school - especially if they
have their period" she said. "And
I met some girls who tell me they miss school for one week a month...so you see
the dimensions of the tragedy."
Jane Caro
from international NGO WaterAid has told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat program
the aim of World Toilet Day is to bring the issue of sanitation out into the
open.
"As
long as we keep it hidden - partly because it's such a taboo, shameful kind of
subject still, shamefully - there isn't the same kind of pressure to provide
this kind of infrastructure as there is perhaps for other things," she
said.
"I
think it is that silence that has allowed this to go on, and avoid thinking
about it, and avoid, therefore, actually raising awareness, increasing
pressure...and generally just being more open about the issue, which is I think
the first step towards doing something about it."
WaterAid
says 1 in 3 women and girls do not have access to toilets, and unsafe or open
toilets increase the risks of physical and sexual violence. Ms Caro
says they've found World Toilet Day events such as 'Big Squat' flash mobs help
to raise awareness of the dangers through humour.
When I
started...to think about what it would be like to be a woman in a village where
there was no toilet - or only one - and where it was not only embarrassing to
reveal my needs, but possibly dangerous? It made me think."
"There's
an obvious way to get people to talk about it, and that is our tendency to have
'toilet humour' as part of the way we joke with one another," she said.
"I
actually think using some humour...[makes] people think, because that's what it
did for me when I started to know about this, was actually to think about what
it would be like to be a woman in a village where there was no toilet - or only
one - and where it was not only embarrassing to reveal my needs, but possibly
dangerous. It
made me think."
One
organisation working on the ground in Papua New Guinea is A-T Projects, which
uses local materials to develop toilets for schools and communities in in
Goroka Province.
Director
Miriam Layton says while some foreign aid helps in setting up proper
sanitation, more needs to be done by the local and PNG governments to improve
facilities.
She says
she hopes the new female governor of Eastern Highlands province will help drive
the push to improve sanitation needs for women. "In
our urban centres, as well as rural centres, there is no proper facilities to
cater for women's needs as well," she said.
"So
when women come for business in town, or for markets as well, they face problems
when looking for toilets, and that is when they are arrested and there's
violence.
"At
the moment we are still getting support from outside, no own government - so we
need to do a lot more work to convince the Papua New Guinea government, as well
as the donors, to do more in this area."
