Today is World Toilet Day. A day which most
people won’t have heard of and fewer would understand. Let me explain. Today
almost two fifths of the world’s population does not have access to even a
basic toilet. That’s 2.6 billion people.
A combination of a lack of safe water and
sanitation means that people are forced to live in conditions which are
unhygienic at best and life-threatening at worst. Diarrhoea caused by unclean
water and poor sanitation is the biggest killer of children in Africa. That is more than AIDS, malaria and measles
combined. It is entirely preventable. We can, and must do our bit to change
this.
To really deal with poverty we have to understand
two things: one, that all issues are interconnected, and two, that the role of
women is crucial. There are few things we can do that cut across health,
education, economics and social mobility like water and sanitation.
It is women who bear the brunt of a lack of
safe water and sanitation. When there is no easy access to water women and
children, mainly the girls, are tasked with the drudgery water collection. This
can involve walking for hours in the baking heat to collect water which can be muddy,
polluted or contaminated with parasites and animal waste. This is not only
physically demanding, but also takes up time which could be spent earning an
income, at school or looking after the family. A lack of separate toilets for
girls in schools is also a hugely overlooked issue which reduces the number of
girls going to school. When girls reach the age of puberty they need somewhere private
and clean to manage this. Many girls simply drop out of getting a vital
education for something as simple as a toilet.
Women and girls suffer the most when
communities don’t have basic sanitation, facing the indignity of having to go
to the toilet in the open and, in many cultures, having to wait until after
dark to do so, risking sexual assault or animal attacks.
Further to this poor water and sanitation costs
Sub-Saharan Africa around 5% of its GDP each year, equivalent to the amount of
aid the continent currently receives from donor nations.
Yet all this can be prevented. With good sanitation facilities and safe water
available close to home, precious hours that were once spent recovering from
illness or walking to find water can be spent in more productive ways, from
working to earn a living to looking after children or going to school and
getting an education. This is what makes water and sanitation such a good
investment – for every £1 spent £8 is generated in increased productivity.
We can and must stop this crisis.
The scale of the problem may seem vast, but there are proven, cost effective
solutions available that can not only save lives but transform them, providing
the first, crucial steps out of poverty. The
UK Government has already achieved much through its own investment in water and
sanitation, and the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7% of its national income on aid
is going to save and transform more lives in years to come.
Sadly, there is still a long way to go. At
the current rate of progress, the UN Millennium Development Goal to halve the
proportion of people living without basic sanitation by 2015 will be missed by
a billion people. This simply isn’t good enough, and shows that thus far
political will hasn’t been strong enough to push this issue forward. We will
not succeed in a more if we do not invest in water and sanitation.
To mark World Toilet Day, international
charity WaterAid is launching a campaign, Water
Works, to highlight the life changing impact of sanitation and safe water
ahead of next April’s High Level Meeting on water and sanitation in Washington
DC. High level involvement from the UK Government is critical to the success of
this meeting. I’ll be putting my support behind the campaign, and you can too
at www.wateraid.org/waterworks.
