Independent Expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation

Issues in focus

Sanitation

In 2009, the Independent Expert chose to focus on the human rights obligations related to sanitation. She held an expert consultation, and a public consultation, to inform her work on this issue. She will present a report to the Human Rights Council in September 2009, outlining the human rights obligations related to sanitation.

Lack of access to sanitation has a profound negative impact on many human rights. Diarrhoea is one of the biggest killers of children under 5 in the world. Too often, the contents of people’s toilets are emptied into the streets, or even into nearby streams and rivers, which then serve as drinking water for the population, with devastating health consequences. Poor sanitation also has a serious impact on the right to education, with kids missing school due to water and sanitation related diseases. Girls especially drop out when there are no sex segregated toilets. Women, as the primary caregivers of sick relatives lose out on work opportunities when they stay home to care for the ill. In urban slums, the sanitation problems are particularly severe, with human excreta lining the streets and contaminating the food, water and general living environment. Lack of access to sanitation is a symptom and consequence of poverty. 

Most of all though, sanitation is about dignity. The Supreme Court of India has observed that the failure to provide access to sanitation “drives the miserable slumdwellers to ease in the streets, on the sly for a time, and openly thereafter, because under Nature’s pressure, bashfulness becomes a luxury and dignity a difficult art.”

Despite its importance, sanitation is frequently neglected. It is not prioritized in most development aid programmes, and it receives less funding than the associated area of water. The lack of serious attention to the problem of sanitation is also evident in the absence of effective national policies, diverse and fragmented responsibilities for sanitation across government ministries, and a general lack of understanding of the positive effects of investing in sanitation.

In 2000 when the countries of the world came together to adopt the Millennium Declaration, again the issue of sanitation was neglected. Fortunately, in 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, targets related to sanitation were added to the MDG efforts. The MDGs pledge to halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015. Regrettably, studies on progress toward the achievement of the MDGs reveal that the sanitation target is one of the most off track of all the MDGs. And even if the world harnesses all of its political will and resources to meet that MDG target, 1.8 billion people will still not have access to sanitation. Human rights demand universal access.