Building blocks

Sanitation, water and hygiene education are the building blocks for all development, yet the international effort to improve these services is in disarray.

WaterAid's aim for 2008, the International Year of Sanitation, was to get governments talking about toilets and to reduce the number of people living without adequate sanitation. Oliver Cumming reports on the year and explains why urgent action is still needed to tackle the crisis.

Before I sat down to write this feature, I quickly popped to the loo. It took me all of two minutes, because I am one of the lucky ones: I am one of more than four billion people in the world who live with access to good sanitation. I'm guessing you are too.

For the world's remaining 2.5 billion residents, who live without access to a decent toilet the simple act of defecation can be a highly distressing ordeal. When they need to go to the toilet they have to face the indignity of squatting behind a bush or using some sort of rudimentary, unhygienic facility such as a few bamboo poles balanced above a ditch, shielded only by tattered rags. They also face the ongoing risk of contracting deadly diseases.

40% of the world's population lack access to sanitation. Add your voice and demand action this year.

Credit: WaterAid / Caroline Irby

Nearly a million people joined our call on the G8 to act. Thank you for adding your voice.

The human cost of unsafe sanitation and water is immense – every day at least 5,000 children lose their lives to diarrhoeal diseases. The cost in lost productivity is also crippling for developing countries' economies. Every day, 473 million school days are missed because of poor sanitation, while adults are kept out of productive work and medical bills mount up – totalling the equivalent of around 9% of GDP (national income) in many countries.

Yet, despite its obvious impact the only things as overwhelming as the scale of the crisis is the scale of its neglect. The taboo nature of sanitation has enabled government leaders to get away with systematically failing to act to avert the crisis.

In 2008, the UN-declared International Year of Sanitation, WaterAid set out to break the silence on sanitation. Our message has been simple but compelling: sanitation is the single development intervention which brings the greatest public health returns, yet it remains the most neglected of all the development sectors. Sanitation is an effective and untapped means to secure progress in health, education, and economic growth.

With your support we have campaigned, lobbied and worked with the media to amplify this message with real and tangible success. Through campaign actions globally nearly a million people joined our call on the G8 to act. Thank you for adding your voice.

We lobbied key decision makers at national, regional and global levels. We secured valuable coverage of sanitation in The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Daily Telegraph amongst others.

Milestone actions followed: The eThekwini Declaration in February committed African governments to take immediate action on sanitation and invest a minimum of 0.5% GDP in it. At the South Asian Conference on Sanitation in November, the governments of South Asia made an unprecedented statement recognising sanitation as a basic right.The President of Mali declared himself a regional sanitation champion and the President of Madagascar declared a new ministry for sanitation, along with a new plan and financing.

At the global level, we took our demands to the G8 Summit in Japan in July and to the UN
High Level Event on Millennium Development Goal progress in New York in September. We challenged scepticism of, or plain indifference to, our efforts by presenting compelling data and lobbying for change. And we succeeded!

The G8 specifically addressed sanitation in their statement and committed that it would be addressed again this year in Italy. World leaders in New York called for action on sanitation and water and the Prime Minister of Holland (along with others) committed serious money and political energy to a Global Framework for Action.

Shifts in attitudes towards sanitation are hard to summarise, but two remarks from senior officials stood out for me this year: comments about two hats. "If the G8 include sanitation in their statement, I'll eat my hat," said one senior UK government official. "If Ban Ki-Moon attends the High Level Event meeting on sanitation, I'll eat my hat," said a senior UN official. Well, both happened. We're not going to call for any public hat-eating, but in short our expectations have been surpassed.

We have travelled a huge distance in 2008 and the foundations have been firmly laid for concerted action towards reaching those without sanitation. Please continue to support us as we build up the pressure and push for world leaders to keep their promises at the G8 summit in Italy this year.

Oliver Cumming is WaterAid's Policy Officer – Sanitation & Environment