#5: World Toilet Day


Source: World Toilet Day website


Happy World Toilet Day: a day dedicated to raising awareness about the global sanitation crisis, in which 4.2 billion people worldwide lack adequate sanitation. In this blog post, carrying on with the underlying theme of development, I aim to neatly contextualise the position of sanitation in the water and development agenda and its relation to women.


In Africa, around 65% of the population depend upon in-situ sanitation, mostly pit latrines, and around 10% have no sanitation system whatsoever (Adelana and MacDonald, 2008). In a world where more people today have access to a mobile phone than a toilet; these figures are pretty shocking (Thieme, 2017). Presently in urban municipalities, there is a lack of clean toilets and washrooms nearby to its users. Individuals resort to unhygienic coping strategies resulting in severe health complications. After considering these sanitation issues, I can't even think of a moment where I have ever questioned how, when or where I would use the toilet...I never needed to. 

 

World Toilet Day (WTD) is one way in which the dialect around improvements to sanitation, i.e. talking about shit, is becoming more prominent in the development agenda. The role of the toilet acts as a single powerful object, invoking discussions surrounding poor sanitation and prompt large scale infrastructural developments. Before the introduction of WTD in 2013 and the declaration of the “year of sanitation” in 2008 by the United Nations, sanitation has been camouflaged behind targets for improving clean water as an "afterthought, if considered at all" (George, 2008). In the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set in 2000, sanitation improvement targets were invisible. It was only until the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) where sanitation goals were introduced internationally as part of SDG 6: water and sanitation for all.  

 

When the UN set new goals for the SDGs, they vowed to ‘leave no one behind’, notably women. This movement towards including women in their development goals draws parallels to how sanitation has only recently become a key segment of the development agenda. Furthermore, the main problems surrounding sanitation in Africa are due to toilets being limited, unhygienic and far from its users. This mirrors how time-poverty experienced by women in Africa is rooted in the limited quantity of clean and nearby water infrastructure. The core of the issues around sanitation and water development in Africa is similar. So if we pay so much attention to developing water infrastructure, why should sanitation be left out? 

 

Hence, the need to improve both sanitation and water infrastructures is crucial, especially as the exponential growth of urbanisation needs to match the construction of sanitation infrastructure (Davis, 2006). And so, for my next post, I will detail how poor sanitation can negatively affect women, contributing to the expanding discussion of sanitation and women in the development agenda. 


Don't forget to check out the World Toilet Day website! 

Comments

  1. Lana KhanNovember 29, 2020 at 10:16 AM

    This is great post! It is really nice to see how you have actively engaged with a global campaign to help outline the apparent influences of poor sanitation on women. I'm looking forward to learning more about how women are affected in Africa's sanitation crises,

    ReplyDelete
  2. Elizabeth LeesNovember 30, 2020 at 12:47 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Elizabeth LeesNovember 30, 2020 at 12:50 PM

      Great Post Sophia! The facts you've highlighted here are shocking and show the relevance and need for World Toilet Day. Looking forward to the next post

      Delete
    2. Sophia SaeedDecember 10, 2020 at 4:19 AM

      Thanks Elizabeth, I am glad to hear you are enjoying.

      Delete
  3. Heather GoldringDecember 3, 2020 at 8:33 AM

    Interesting post, I enjoyed reading your reflections on how sanitation has only become part of water-discourse in recent years.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nick Lising-WhiteDecember 6, 2020 at 6:09 PM

    I really enjoyed reading this post Sophia! You did a great job weaving in how world toiler day makes sense in the context of your entire blog.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sophia SaeedDecember 10, 2020 at 4:25 AM

      Thank you Nick, looking forward to your next blogs.

      Delete
  5. Carmen ElliottFebruary 7, 2021 at 1:26 PM

    The title drew me in! You really highlighted some shocking statistics. Looking froward to reading you next posts

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#3: A small but necessary diversion...

Image
Last time, I concluded that for this post, I would zoom into a management strategy associated with women and water collection in Africa. However, as I was scrolling through The Times, I came across an interesting title… Source: The Times On Wednesday of this week, Comic Relief pledged to stop sending “white saviour” celebrities to Africa and produce fundraising appeals with a “more authentic perspective” made by local " young black and brown-film" . The charity who famously host “Red Nose Day” will stop using images of critically ill or starved individuals as homogenous members of the population in efforts to represent the continent more realistically.    Importantly, this news takes me back to my first post of the blog whereby I reflected on Binyavanga Wainaina’s satirical piece on ‘How to Write About Africa’ . These new Comic Relief guidelines of storytelling will elucidate the narratives and diversity of the continent, including the voices of women. These voices are yet t...
Read more

#9: The end of the beginning

Alas, this is the final post of my ‘Water in Africa: A Feminist Perspective’ blog. Here, I will summarise the discussions I have proposed over the last few months, reflecting upon what I have learnt and what more there is to learn about water and women’s development in Africa.     Since my first blog post, I have been determined to embody the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) ethos to “leave no one behind” by amplifying the matters concerning women and water development in Africa. I referenced the SDGs, especially SDG 5 (achieving gender equality) and SDG 6 (available adequate water supplies) as being critical to women’s development. These goals, and a multitude of the other SDGs, acted as a base throughout my blog when analysing strategies that sought to improve water and sanitation facilities in Africa.  By accompanying my posts with diverse rural and urban case studies, I aimed to represent Africa as a diverse socioeconomic and enviro...
Read more