Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to bring 1.5 million toilets to the 600 million Indians without access by 2019. If he fails that could prove dangerous in an election year.
Newly built toilets at Harper transit site in Liberia.
Oxfam International/Flickr
While everyone needs access to proper sanitation to stay healthy, for girls and women it is also an issue of safety and equal participation in society.
Children in Ethiopia wash their hands outside a school latrine.
Unicef Ethiopia
More than two billion people lack access to decent sanitation. Innovative sanitation technologies can bring toilets into the 21st century with benefits for the developing and developed world.
Ruin of a second-century public toilet in Roman Ostia.
Fr Lawrence Lew, OP
Archaeological and textual detective work is filling in some information about how ancient Romans used and thought about their sewers thousands of years ago.
Public ‘restroom’ is a euphemism of the highest order. We don’t find it restful.
Poor sanitation leads to diseases like malnutrition and stunted growth in children. It also makes them sick and unable to attend school.
Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters
Sanitation is a massive problem in East Africa. On the supply side there are a host of problems which are preventing people from accessing decent sanitation.
Millions of people in Africa don’t have access to adequate sanitation.
Shutterstock
Despite improvements, there are still millions of people without adequate sanitation in Africa. Sustainable solutions that can be replicated elsewhere are being developed in South Africa.
A woman stands outside a makeshift toilet built by a resident of a slum colony based on the bank of the Yamuna River, India.
Flickr/Gates Foundation
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has wowed audiences in Australia during his recent visit and used the occasion to remind people of his plan to provide a toilet at home for all Indians by 2019. The…
Lack of proper sanitation, as in these homes in Dhaka, Bangladesh, creates all sorts of risks to social and economic wellbeing.
It’s 2014. So why do we still need World Toilet Day? Because 2.5 billion people still need one. World Toilet Day remains a critical means to raise awareness globally about one of the many important things…
Sewage would be useful if it wasn’t mixed in together.
EPA
The critical links between water, sanitation, and our global consumption of energy – the “energy-water nexus” are more obvious than ever before. But how many of us will take direct action at the most basic…
What toilet? In this refugee camp, children play in the holes dug for latrines.
Oxfam International
Why does one third of the world’s population have inadequate sanitation? Hopefully I can shed a bit of light on this. You see, my work is shit – literally – which is why I call myself a water, sanitation…
Toilets aren’t just a bin for human waste - they’re a receptacle for future fertiliser.
Gates Foundation
What goes down our toilet is commonly viewed as waste. This makes intuitive sense because separating people from their excreta - sanitation - is arguably the single most important public health objective…