Women, girls risk rape for lack of decent toilet facilities – Ban

Today 19^th November is world’s toilet day. A day earmarked by the United Nations to raise awareness on the state of sanitation around the world especially in third world and developing nations. According to statistics released by the UN, Some 2.4 billion people around the world don’t have access to decent sanitation and over a billion are forced to defecate in the open, thereby getting exposed to disease and other dangers.
The world regulatory body insists that poor sanitation increases the risk of illness and malnutrition, especially for children, and called for women and girls in particular to be offered safe, clean facilities. “One out of three women around the world lack access to safe toilets,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement. “As a result they face disease, shame and potential violence when they seek a place to defecate.”
Even where toilets are found, they fail to match their description in words. The U.N. says that while there is sufficient fresh water on the planet for everyone, “bad economics and poor infrastructure” means that every year millions of people – most of them children – die from diseases linked to poor sanitation, unhygienic living conditions and lack of clean water supplies.
“We have a moral imperative to end open defecation and a duty to ensure women and girls are not at risk of assault and rape simply because they lack a sanitation facility,” Ban said.