Caste complicates push for Clean India
India's caste system, in which the lower castes are seen as responsible for cleaning may be an obstacle to Modi's vision of a Clean India (Swachh Bharat)
Policy and advocacy for sanitation
How a hole in the ground can help poor countries recover $260 billion a year
Floating toilets. Toilets on wheels pulled by bikes. Toilets that compost. In his 30 years of worrying about human waste, there’s probably not a variation on this most fundamental of fixtures that Andy Bastable, head of water and sanitation for Oxfam Great Britain, hasn’t seen. On our increasingly crowded planet where experts predict that 66 percent of the population will be living in urban areas by 2050, the simple latrine is more essential than ever.
Access to toilets in Ghana still low
Mr Julius Debrah, Minister for Local Government and Rural Development Wednesday expressed exasperation about the rather slow improvement in the access to toilets by citizens across the country. He said the six percent access in 1990 rose to only 15 percent in 2013, a dismal situation, giving indication, Ghana might not meet the Millennium Development Goal (MGD) target of 54 percent. Mr Debrah gave this assessment in a speech read for him at a ceremony in Ho to mark World Toilet Day in Ghana.
Ending Open Defecation in Nigeria
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) recently gave an indication that it would develop a road map for Nigeria to end open defecation by 2025. The organisation hold the belief that by eliminating open defecation, rampant cases of diarrhoea that kill many children of less than five years annually in the country, would reduce.
How did you mark World Toilet Day: send us your stories and pictures of your celebrations!
Share your plans, stories and pictures of your World Toilet Day activities with us!
How to eliminate open defecation by 2030
Junaid Ahmad of the World Bank reflects on what it will take to eliminate open defecation, touching on key elements such as political will, behaviour change, sanitation marketing, the role of the public sector and incentives.
Is Swachh Bharat repeating mistakes of the past?
India's proposed toilet revolution is all set to repeat mistakes of the past, writes Sreenivasan Jain. Read the story in Business Standard, 30th October 2014
Negros Oriental (Philippines) vows to end open defecation
Some 24 percent of Negros Oriental household population are still practicing open defecation or having unsanitary toilets.This was reported during the first Provincial Sanitation Summit (29th October 2014) by Assistant Provincial Health Officer Dr. Edgardo Barredo as Negros Oriental marches towards zero open defecation (ZOD) under the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP). According to Dr.
Need to clean our biases first, then our streets
The country is ostensibly in the throes of a great social movement for sanitation. Gandhi’s name is evoked, Prime Minister Narendra Modi leads from the front, ministers lift brooms for cameras, and officers, college and school children take oaths against littering and to clean their surroundings. Earlier the PM pledges in his Independence Day speech toilets for girls and boys in all schools.
We have a lot to learn...
Last week’s Water and Health Conference held at the University of North Carolina’s Water Institute had an array of different workshops, side events and oral and poster presentations focusing on sanitation. After only a day into the week-long event two important messages started to emerge. Firstly, the sanitation problem is endemic in certain parts of the world, especially India, and unfortunately we do not know a lot and have an awful lot to learn.
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