World Toilet Day

   “ In a changing world, one thing is constant: we’ll always need the toilet. No matter what lies ahead, we will always rely on sanitation to protect us from diseases and keep our environment clean. Today, billions of people still live without a safe toilet — with the poorest, especially women and girls, worst affected. ”  • A “safe toilet” is shorthand for ‘safely managed sanitation’ , which means a toilet that is not shared with other households, that either treats or disposes of human waste on site, stores it safely to be emptied and treated off site, or connects to a functioning sewer and treatment plant. • Sanitation is a human right – entitling everyone to affordable and accessible sanitation services, in all spheres of life. • Inadequate sanitation lets human waste and wastewater contaminate the environment, especially in densely populated areas. Children are particularly vulnerable to diseases, such as cholera, which are spread by exposure to untreated waste. • ...

  “We urgently need to invest in ‘future-ready’ sanitation today. Together, we must ensure toilets are: accessible to all; resilient to floods, droughts and other climate shocks; minimize greenhouse gas emissions; and, are supported by strong systems and sustained investment.”  • Safely managed sanitation is essential for a resilient and more sustainable society, and drives progress across the 2030 Agenda, particularly in health, gender equality, livelihoods and environmental protection. • Sanitation services must be resilient to climate-related disasters – able to withstand and be sustained during and after these events or recover quickly to protect public health. • Safely managed sanitation, including safely reusing treated wastewater as a source of water, nutrients and energy, is critical to reducing emissions, protecting ecosystems, and building a circular economy. • Local and national authorities should allocate and increase sustained funding to sanitation and include...

• 3.4 billion people still live without safely managed sanitation services — that’s nearly half the world’s population. (WHO/UNICEF, 2025)  • 354 million people still practise open defecation , increasing the risk of disease and harm, especially for women and girls. (WHO/UNICEF, 2025)  • Only 58% of the global population use a safely managed sanitation service — which means an improved toilet that is not shared, and has excreta safely disposed of in situ or transported and treated offsite. (WHO/UNICEF, 2025)

 At the current rates of progress, 3 billion people will still be living without safe toilets in 2030 . (WHO/UNICEF, 2023)  Globally, to achieve SDG target 6.2 –sanitation for all by 2030 – will require a six-foldincrease, on average, in the rate of progress on sanitation . In low-income countries, rates need to increase 13-fold for basic sanitation, and 21-fold for safely managed sanitation. (WHO/UNICEF, 2023)

 • By 2050, around 1.6 billion people will be at risk of floods, potentially disrupting ordestroying sanitation services as well as dislocating populations so they no longer have access to safely managed sanitation , and up to 3.2 billion people will live in potentially severely water-scarce areas, negatively impacting sanitation services. (United Nations, 2020)  • Increased glacier melting, exacerbated by methane emissions from sanitation,contributes significantly to global sea-level rise , with today’s sea level about 20 cm higher than in 1900, risking inundating coastal sanitation infrastructure and services. (IPCC, 2020)