Toilets and Jobs
Jan Eliasson, Deputy Secretary - General of the United Nations, as provided to the Huffington Post,
November 18, 2016.
Puzzled looks, uncomfortable silence and
confusion in t he interpretation booths.
These were among the reactions I received
when I first began to talk about toilets and
open defecation at the United Nations
some years ago. This topic was not part of
the diplomatic discourse at the time, but I
had seen enough to know that it needed to
be.
For me, the importance of access to clean
water, sanitation and good hygiene, often
referred to as WASH, became clear when I
was the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator
twenty - four years ago. In Somalia, I saw
children dying of deh ydration, dysentery
and diarrhea... preventable illnesses. Since
then, I have seen how the lack of access to water and sanitation has kept girls out of school for want of their
own facilities, women from paid work because they spend too much time fetching water and entire
communities struggling to stay healthy enough to work and take care of their families.
Substantial progress has been made, but the challenge remains. An estimated 1.8 billion people worldwide
use faecally contaminated water sources. 2.4 b illion people lack improved sanitation. In poor countries, 90 per
cent of sewage is discharged untreated into rivers, lakes and coastal areas. Globally, more than 800 children
under the age of five die every day from diarrheal diseases related to water, sa nitation and hygiene.
Yet sanitation in particular remains an issue which is still viewed as taboo and not suited for discussion in the
halls of power. But I felt many years ago as I do now, that we cannot turn the great challenges of our time into
opport unities if we refuse to talk about them.
That is why I launched the Call to Action on Sanitation in 2013 on behalf of the Secretary - General, in order to
mobilize the international community for WASH, especially for sanitation.
Last year governments of th e world recognized the interconnected nature of so many of the challenges we
face when they agreed on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Maria and her children stand in front of the place where they go
to wash themselves. Photo: UNICEF Angola/2016 /Simancas
W EEKLY EDITION NOV 30, 2016
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