| By Rasna Warah
Access to adequate sanitation in urban areas remains one of the most
under-funded and under-valued development objectives among the international
community. Although Millennium Development Goal 7, Target 11 broadly
refers to improving the lives of slum dwellers by 2020, and Target 10
talks of improving access to safe drinking water, not one of the other
targets specifically talk of improving sanitation.
It was only at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002
that access to sanitation was finally recognized as an internationally
agreed target. The Summit agreed to “halve, by 2015, the proportion
of people who do not have access to basic sanitation”. UN-HABITAT,
in recognition of this important target, has also incorporated it in
its slum definition, and will be monitoring this target as part of its
global monitoring of slum conditions.
National statistics on access to sanitation also under-rate and understate
the problem. Hundreds of millions of urban dwellers, “with sanitation
facilities” only have access to a poorly-maintained latrine shared
with dozens of other people often outside their homes.
Part of the problem why access to sanitation is not a high priority
issue on the development agenda is that few development agencies, including
women’s organizations and the feminist movement in general, have
taken this on as a priority issue. While women’s organizations
have made great strides in promoting other concerns, the sanitation
crisis has become lost in the jargon.
There is no issue that touches the lives of women – particularly
poor urban women – as intimately as that of access to adequate
sanitation.
In the slums of cities such as Mumbai and Nairobi, the only time women
dare to relieve themselves is early dawn, between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m.
when it is still dark and there is less risk of being accosted. Going
to the toilet often means squatting in a private spot or going to the
nearest pit latrine before the queues start forming. In some slums of
Nairobi, as many as 200 people share one pit latrine; others use what
are commonly called “flying toilets” – which means
defecating in plastic bags and throwing the bags on roofs of slum dwellings
or by the roadside. In Dharavi, Mumbai’s largest slum, there is
one public toilet for every 800 people. Many of the men in Dharavi urinate
and defecate along the railway tracks or in open spaces. But women –
whose anatomy, modesty and susceptibility to attack do not allow them
to relieve themselves in public – have no choice but to wait till
dark or stand in line with hundreds of others.
As we prepare for a new decade…we
need to make politicians and ordinary people aware of what it
means when large sections of society are denied safe water and
sanitation. We need to consider what price people pay through
poor health and lost wages; what a nation pays through enormous
medical bills and lost economic opportunities. What price does
one put on women’s safety and dignity? — Anna Tibaijuka,
Executive
Director, UN-HABITAT |
For women in slums, a four-hour wait at the public toilet could mean
that children are left unattended, or that a household chore is left
undone or delayed. For women who are menstruating, the need for adequate
sanitation becomes even more acute. Rural women, no matter how poor,
do not have to face the same dilemma because even the most poor dwelling
in a village is likely to have its own pit latrine, which means there
is one toilet per family. Access to sanitation is, therefore, probably
one of the only development indicators where rural communities actually
fare better than urban communities.
Often it takes a visionary leader to turn things around. One of the
most inspiring and committed advocates for adequate sanitation is Mr.
Jockin Arputham, President of the National Slum Dwellers Federation
of India. When I asked why his fight was focused so much on toilets,
he said it was because in his native Mumbai, public toilets are often
the only places where slum communities meet and share information. His
efforts to improve access to public toilets for slum dwellers was, therefore,
not just to provide a basic service, but also to maintain and strengthen
community links and solidarity.
Thanks to Mr. Arputham, the World Bank is now financing the construction
of public toilets across the city by various NGOs and the communities
themselves. The communities responsible for the maintenance and upkeep
of the toilets, celebrate the opening of a new toilet complex with fanfare.
Mr. Arputham’s dream is that there will soon be one toilet for
every 50 of Mumbai’s over 6 million slum dwellers. For the women
of Mumbai’s slums this can only be good news.
Rasna Warah, a journalist based in Nairobi, is a Board Member of
the Society for International Development’s Eastern Africa Office. |
