Questions people ask about World Toilet Day 2024

World Toilet Day may raise a smile, but its focus is deadly serious.

3.5 billion people are still living without access to safe toilets, with devastating consequences for public health, infant mortality, the economy and environment.

World Toilet Day has been an annual United Nations Observance since 2013, raising awareness of the global sanitation crisis and calling for faster and greater action.

As we approach World Toilet Day 2024, on 19 November, these are some of the questions people are asking us.

?

What happens on World Toilet Day?

World Toilet Day is celebrated every year on 19 November. In the run-up to the day, a global campaign , coordinated by UN-Water, raises awareness of key issues and inspires people to get involved and call for more action.?

A range of campaign resources are available online – such as the Factsheet, and Activation Kit aimed at young people – and conversations take place on social media with the hashtag #WorldToiletDay.

Individuals, organizations, governments, companies and schools also hold real-life events.

?

What is the global sanitation crisis?

Access to sanitation is a human right. Living without safely managed sanitation – essentially a secure, hygienic, effective toilet – is undignified and dangerous, especially for women and girls.?

Inadequate or non-existent toilets and sanitation systems can leak untreated human waste into the environment, contaminating water sources and getting back into the food chain.

• 3.5 billion people still live without safely managed sanitation, including 419 million who practise open defecation. (WHO/UNICEF, 2023 )
• 2 billion still lack?basic hygiene services (i.e., a handwashing facility with soap and water), including 653 million with no facility at all.?(WHO/UNICEF, 2023 )
• Unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene are responsible for the deaths of around 1,000 children under 5 every day. (WHO, 2023 )
• Poorly managed sanitation is a major greenhouse gas emitter, contributing 3%-5% of anthropogenic methane emissions. (USAID, 2023 )

Poorly managed sanitation also impacts the environment, damaging essential marine ecosystems including seagrass beds which sequester carbon 35 times faster than terrestrial forests. (PLOS, 2021)

?

What is World Toilet Day 2024 focused on?

The campaign is called ‘Toilets – A Place for Peace’, highlighting how broken or inadequate sanitation systems affect people’s lives, and showing how sustainable sanitation is essential to a healthy and stable society.

The three key messages for World Toilet Day 2024 are:

1. Toilets are a place for peace.?This essential space, at the centre of our lives, should be safe and secure. But for billions of people, sanitation is under threat from conflict, climate change, disasters and neglect.
2. Toilets are a place for protection.?By creating a barrier between us and our waste, sanitation services are essential for public and environmental health. But when toilet systems are inadequate, damaged or broken, pollution spreads, unleashing deadly diseases.
3. Toilets are a place for progress. Sanitation is a human right. It protects everyone’s dignity, and especially transforms the lives of women and girls. More investment and better governance of sanitation are critical for a fairer, more peaceful world.

?

How does sanitation affect antimicrobial resistance (AMR)?

There is a severe lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in many clinics and hospitals.

WASH plays a pivotal role in reducing the need for antibiotics by preventing infections, which in turn helps limit the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites no longer respond to antimicrobial agents and can become difficult or impossible to treat.

• 10 per cent of health care facilities globally have no sanitation service , which means they either have rudimentary facilities like an open pit latrine or no toilets at all.
• Half of health care facilities worldwide lack basic hygiene services with water and soap or alcohol-based hand rub where patients receive care and at toilets in these facilities, according to the latest Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP)?report?by WHO and UNICEF.

Global leaders at the UN General Assembly in September 2024 committed to a clear set of targets and actions on tackling AMR , including reducing the estimated 4.95 million human deaths associated with bacterial AMR by 10 per cent a year by 2030.

Coming up is World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW) 2024, 18-24 November . The theme for WAAW 2024 is 'Educate. Advocate. Act now', and the campaign provides a range of concrete actions to raise awareness of, prevent and address AMR.

Join the World Toilet Day 2024 campaign ‘Toilets – A Place for Peace’

Visit www.un.org/en/observances/toilet-day to learn more and get involved, and start using the campaign assets from now until World Toilet Day, 19 November.