Ensuring women's access to safe toilets is "moral" imperative: UN chief

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, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday.

The secretary-general made the statement in his message for World Toilet Day, which falls on Nov. 19. This year's theme for the Day is "Equality, Dignity and the Link Between Gender-Based Violence and Sanitation."

Ban said 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.

"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," he said.

World Toilet Day is a day to take action. It is also a day to raise awareness about all people who do not have access to a toilet -- despite the human right to water and sanitation.

The United Nations General Assembly in July 2013 designated Nov. 19 as World Toilet Day. This day had previously been marked by international and civil society organizations all over the world but was not formally recognized as an official UN day until 2013.

The Day is coordinated by UN-Water in collaboration with governments and relevant stakeholders.

UN-Water is the United Nations coordination mechanism for freshwater related issues, including sanitation.The agency is comprised of UN entities with a focus on, or interest in, water related issues and its main purpose is to complement and add value to existing programs and projects by facilitating synergies and joint efforts, so as to maximize system-wide coordinated action and coherence.

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 diarrhea.

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, 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) programs.

"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) practicing 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 percent of the 1 billion people practicing open defecation live in just 10 countries: India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Niger, China, Nepal and Mozambique.

The numbers of people practicing 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.

At UN Headquarters in New York on Wednesday, events have been organized to mark the Day including a panel discussion co- organized by the Permanent Mission of Singapore to the United Nations and UN-Water and a press conference with the Deputy Secretary-General and several other officials.

According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water published bi-annually, presents data from 94 countries and 23 external support agencies. This year's report was also released in connection with events to mark World Toilet Day.

Two thirds of the 94 countries surveyed recognized drinking- water and sanitation as a universal human right in national legislation. More than 80 percent reported having national policies in place for drinking-water and sanitation, and more than 75 percent have policies for hygiene, the report said.

On the other hand, international aid for water and sanitation is on the rise. According to the report, financial commitments increased by 30 percent between 2010 and 2012 -- from 8.3 billion U.S. dollars to 10.9 billion U.S. dollars. And aid commitments are increasingly targeted to underserved regions, notably sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia and South-eastern Asia.

The report also said "many other water-borne diseases, such as cholera, typhoid and hepatitis, are prone to explosive outbreaks. Poor sanitation and hygiene can also lead to debilitating diseases affecting scores of people in the developing world, like intestinal worms, blinding trachoma and schistosomiasis."

Investments in water and sanitation yield substantial benefits for human health and development, said the report.