Pathetic

Two girls died looking for a
toilet. This should make us
angry, not embarrassed
Attacks on girls and women as they look
for somewhere private to defecate are
frighteningly common. Improving basic
sanitation, as a global goal, would do a
lot to make them safer
children often defecate near the railway tracks.
Photograph: Jon Spaull/WaterAid
wo teenage girls have been gang-
raped and killed after doing what
half a billion women and girls are
forced to do every day – go outdoors to
try to find somewhere discreet to go to
the toilet.
A toilet, bathroom, powder room –
whatever you want to call it – at home,
at school, at work, in the shopping mall,
is something many of us take for granted
and cannot talk about without feeling
embarrassed. But we must: because the
lack of toilets is costing women their
lives.
Today, 2.5 billion people live without
access to a toilet, forcing women to walk
to dark and dangerous places to find the
privacy they need – those same dark and
dangerous places where men wait to
attack them.
So we must stop blushing when we talk
about open defecation because it is not
something to be embarrassed about: it is
something to be angry about.
Those two cousins, just 14 and 16 years
old, had left their homes in the Indian
village of Katra, in Uttar Pradesh,
because they had no toilet at home. They
were never to return, found hanging
from a tree after being brutally attacked.
A report in the Times of India in
February this year quoted the police in
another district of Uttar Pradesh as
saying that 95% of cases of rape and
molestation took place when women and
girls had left their homes to "answer a
call of nature".
But this is certainly not just an Indian
problem. One in three people around the
world lack access to basic sanitation,
while 1 billion of those – that is, 15% of
the global population – currently practise
open defecation.
A WaterAid study in the slums of Lagos
in Nigeria showed that a quarter of
women who lacked access to sanitation
had first- or second-hand experience of
harassment, threats of violence or actual
assault linked to their lack of a safe,
private toilet in the last year. Amnesty
International has released similar studies
from Kenya and the Solomon Islands.
Being forced to defecate by rivers, in
fields or in alleyways not only puts
women and girls at greater risk of sexual
violence and harassment; it is also a
major public health risk.
The practice pollutes natural waterways
and spreads diseases, notably diarrhoea,
a major cause of death in children in the
developing world. Every day, around
1,400 mothers will lose a child to this
disease, brought about because of a lack
of access to basic sanitation, clean water
and hygiene services. Research estimates
that just putting an end to open
defecation worldwide would see this
figure drop by over a third.
This is a problem that can be solved, and
the first step is getting over our
squeamishness. The deputy secretary-
general of the United Nations, Jan
Eliasson, called on the world last week to
"break the diplomatic silence on open
defecation".
The deputy secretary-general's words
and the launch of his campaign come at a
crucial time. Governments are now
negotiating a new poverty reduction
framework to replace the Millennium
Development Goals.
Access to clean water and sanitation
currently ranks as the fifth highest
priority for people voting in the UN's
global My World survey , in which
millions of people around the world have
taken part, joining the international
debate around the new Sustainable
Development Goals. In India, voters put
it as their fourth highest priority for a
better life.
WaterAid, Unicef and the World Health
Organisation, along with hundreds of
other organisations around the world,
are calling for a new Sustainable
Development Goal that would commit
countries to ensuring that everyone
everywhere has access to basic
sanitation, clean drinking water and
hygiene by the year 2030.
For these two teenage girls in India, a
new goal for universal access to
sanitation has come too late. But their
case illustrates in the starkest terms why
access to sanitation and water are
fundamental human rights – and why a
lack of these services is putting hundreds
of millions of children, girls and women
at risk each and every day.