November 19th is World Toilet Day. Building on a previous campaign by the World Toilet Organisation, and designated by the UN in 2013, a different theme each year aims to highlight neglected and underreported aspects of a global sanitation crisis that contributes to an estimated 432,000 diarrhoeal deaths every year. Currently 4.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe sanitation, and 673 million practice open defecation. The theme of World Toilet Day 2019 is ‘leaving no one behind’.  

For this year’s World Toilet Day, UN Water highlight that ‘[a] toilet is not just a toilet. It’s a life-saver, dignity-protector and opportunity-maker.’ And as Nique and Smertnik (2015: 6) point out, ‘sanitation is more than building a toilet and includes changed hygienic behaviours, maintenance, emptying, treatment and disposal or reuse of faecal matter.’ Delivery of sanitation services can involve numerous actors, often with competing interests, across the entire sanitation service delivery chain. A 2017 report from Human Rights Watch (2017: 2) highlights how ‘[b]reakdowns or barriers at any point within the system can lead to devastating impacts on people’s lives and rights.’ Providing toilets, handwashing facilities, and services for the safe removal and disposal of human waste is a big undertaking. The personal, private nature of human sanitation practices also means that improving sanitation involves challenging ingrained social norms and hygienic behaviours, such as open defecation. Today there are many different toilet solutions for different urban, peri-urban, and rural environments. While a growing industry around the economic benefits of human waste, including cooperative toilet blocks that create compost and renewable energy through biogas toilets, pitting human ingenuity against the worlds dirtiest problem.

Inadequate sanitation disproportionally impacts the world’s poorest people, as data mapping the prevalence of open defecation demonstrates. In addition to impacting health, personal safety, and human dignity, lack of access to safe, secure, and hygienic sanitation is a human rights issue. Links between sanitation and human rights are multifaceted and intersectional, with underlying determinants of health, human dignity, and public welfare (Meier et al., 2014). Water and sanitation were affirmed as distinct human rights by the UN General Assembly in 2010 that are ‘inextricably linked to the highest standard of physical and mental health, as well as the right to life and human dignity’ (UN GA Res 64/292) and ‘essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights’ (UN HRC Res.15/L.14).

In 2015 water and sanitation were recognised as linked but independent rights with ‘distinct features which warrant their separate treatment’ (UN Res. 70/169). This recognition of sanitation as a standalone human right reflects the wide range of social and cultural factors of everyday life that sanitation impacts. Few human activities are as universal as going to the bathroom, but where we go to relieve ourselves, our access to sanitation, offers insights into poverty, inequality and marginalisation, impacting human rights to “life, health, gender equality, work, housing, an adequate standard of living, and development’ (Meier et al., 2014: 173). Sanitation is perhaps one of the few health or social crises to which both the causes and the solutions are understood. But there has been a historic imbalance in political attention and funding for sanitation projects, compared to clean water interventions. To this point, sanitation was memorably described in a 2010 WaterAid Report as the “orphan sector – abandoned by health, disdained by financers and ignored by planners.”

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 6.2 seeks access to ‘adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all by 2030, focusing on the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations.’ This target emphasises the close connections between the human rights to gender equality, health equity, and access to education linked to sanitation. As Hanchett (2016:17) points out, ‘problems associated with menstrual hygiene can obstruct, or even stop, adolescent girls’ educational progress, unless their schools’ facilities are set up to help meet this need.’  Safely accessible sanitation facilities would also reduce the likelihood of violence and harassment. As Winkler (2016:1340) explains, ‘women and girls often face risks to their physical security and dignity, including abuse, attack, assault and rape, when having to defecate in the open or relying on shared facilities, especially at night.’

To raise awareness around World Toilet Day, the Toilet Talks project was launched as week-long virtual event to run from November 12th to 19th 2019. Following an open call for contributions through global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) networks, the Toilet Talks website showcases a series of short (3-5 minute) audio stories relating to WASH, bodies, bathrooms, and many of the intersections around access to sanitation and human rights that we have touched upon in this article. Speakers also share their takes on the theme of World Toilet Day 2019, what 'leaving no one behind' means to them, and the ‘social, economic and environmental consequences of inaction’. For example, Sarah Nahar, a PhD student at Syracuse University talks access to sanitation, climate adaptation, and the concept of ‘defecatory justice’; Andres Hueso of WaterAid shares findings of a new report on the plight of sanitation workers; Persis Ramirez shares a personal story from the Dominican Republic about how her grandmother climbed four steps of the ‘sanitation ladder’; and Josefina Cicconetti discusses public toilets as a site for demarcation of identity boundaries. You can access the website here and listen to these and wide range of other informative Toilet Talks: https://marcuserridge9.wixsite.com/toilettalks

Posters advertising Toilet Talks (see image) are being placed in public bathrooms at workplaces and academic institutions for the week preceding World Toilet Day, including those at CES in Coimbra. Posters include a smartphone-readable barcode which links to the website. The idea being to scan the posters and choose from a selection of Toilet Talks to listen to later on, or ‘in situ’! While this project was created to raise awareness of the human right to sanitation for World Toilet Day, if there is sufficient interest and support, it is possible that Toilet Talks may extend its lifespan and roll out again in the near future. For example, Menstrual Hygiene Day on May 28 could provide another opportunity for this platform to help share different insights relating to the human right to sanitation.

Marcus Erridge is a PhD Human Rights in Contemporary Societies student at CES, working on his thesis, ‘Data, Demand, and Sanitation’.