This second blogpost of three on urban sanitation in Indonesia describes the mismatch between policy and practice. Politicians have set the ambitious target to make Indonesia open defecation free by 2019, but a recent visit to Indonesian municipalities makes me wonder whether striving for the end... Read more...
India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi has deviated from convention and made sanitation a central theme of his Independence Day speech 2014. He has announced a programme of Clean India to make the country Open Defecation Free (ODF) by 2019. In that year India will celebrate the 150 th birth... Read more...
Over the last months, a number of influential media outlets have published stories on the deplorable state of sanitation in India and the negative influence this has on the country. While this may be welcome attention for those campaigning for increased government expenditure in the field of... Read more...
A study commissioned by Plan International on the sustainability of CLTS programs in Africa revealed that 87% of the households still had a functioning latrine. Read more...
Working with the Ethiopian government and partners to deliver universal access to WASH services. Read more...
Why are we are building low-cost latrines which may not be able to isolate harmful faecal matter from humans? Read more...
North Tarawa in Kiribati is the first island in the Pacific to be declared open defecation free, thanks to the “Kiriwatsan I Project”. The Ministry of Public Works is implementing this project with technical support from UNICEF and funding from the European Union. In March 2013, North Tarawa... Read more...
The lack of safe toilets for women and girls is often linked to an increased risk of sexual harassment and rape. Earlier studies from Kenya, Uganda and India, and now a recent BBC news item are some of the few sources to actually quantify this risk. Read more...
Nearly half of India's 1.2 billion people have no toilet at home, but more people own a mobile phone, according to the country's latest census data. Only 46.9% of the 246.6 million households have toilets while 49.8% defecate in the open. The remaining 3.2% use public toilets. Read more...
Why do families build toilets? If the family tradition for many generations has been to defecate in the open – using local woods or accepted sites, then what is the incentive to make a break and opt for a toilet instead? Read more...
Plan Niger is one of several NGOs working with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and government health workers on community-led total sanitation (CLTS). A project there is showing people from scores of villages the dangers of open defecation. Read more...
