Kiribati’s North Tarawa declared first open defecation free island in the Pacific

Everyone on North Tarawa now has access to improved sanitation. Photo: ABC Radio Australia / UNICEF Pacific.

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.

North Tarawa is made up of a string of islets with a combined population of 6,102 (2010) and a land area of 15.26 sq.km.  Previously about 64 per cent of people used the beaches and mangroves for defecation and dumping their rubbish.

UNICEF spokeswoman Nuzhat Shahzadi says that diarrhoeal diseases cause 15 per cent of the deaths of children under five in Kiribati.

In March 2013, North Tarawa adopted the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach following a training of trainers course conducted by Dr Kamal Kar. The CLTS pioneer wrote that he had convinced Kiribati President Anote Tong to set December 2015 as the target date for the whole nation to become open defecation free.

The villagers of North Tarawa dig shallow pits and use local materials like brick and coconut leaves to build the toilet superstructure. They keep water and soap in one corner. After using the toilet, the villagers sprinkle ash to stop the smell and flies getting in, and then keep it covered.

Ms Shahzadi said that the women and girls were very happy that no longer have to go out on the beach in the middle of the night if they need to use the toilet.

Source: UNICEF, 11 May 2013 ; Radio New Zealand International, 13 May 2013 ; ABC Radio Australia, 14 May 2013

India, Bihar: rapes ’caused by lack of toilets’

Map showing frequency & severity of violence against
women in Bhalswa slum, Delhi. Shirley Lennon/SHARE.

The lack of safe toilets for women and girls is often linked to an increased risk of sexual harassment and rape. Earlier studies [1] from Kenya, Uganda and India, and now a recent BBC news item are some of the few sources to actually quantify this risk.

Senior police official Arvind Pandey from the Indian state of Bihar told the BBC that 400 women would have “escaped” rape in 2012 if they had toilets in their homes. The rapes take place when women go outside to defecate early in the morning and late evening. These “sanitation-related” rapes make up nearly half of the more than 870 cases of rape in Bihar in 2012.

The BBC news item lists three specific cases:

• On 5 May, an 11-year-old girl was raped in Mai village in Jehanabad district when she was going to the field at night
• On 28 April, a young girl was abducted and raped when she had gone out to defecate in an open field in Kalapur village in Naubatpur, 35km (21 miles) from the state capital, Patna
• On 24 April, another girl was raped in similar circumstances on a farm in Chaunniya village in Sheikhpura district. She told the police that two villagers had followed and raped her. One of them has been arrested

In Bihar , 75.8% of homes have no toilet facilities (Census 2011). Some 49% of the households without a toilet wanted one for “safety and security” for women and children, according to a study by Population Service International (PSI),   Monitor Deloitte and Water for People.

[1] Heise, L., 2013. Danger, disgust and indignity : women’s perception of sanitation in informal settlements. Powerpoint presented at “Making connections: Women, sanitation and health”, 29 April 2013, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Video version available at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS9ulpJqh7s

Related news:

• Request for Proposals: The effects of poor sanitation on women and girls in India, Sanitation Updates, 07 Mar 2013
• India, Delhi: how sexual violence against women is linked to water and sanitation, E-Source, 27 Mar 2012

Source: Amarnath Tewary, BBC, 09 May 2013

 

Golden Poo Award Finalist – Bum Bay

Sanitation Updates’ favourite to win the 2012 Golden Poo Award for best short film has to be Bum Bay. Set to the tune of the 1969 Indo-pop hit “Bombay Meri Hai” – transformed to “Bum Bay Meri Hai” – we see a mock tourist promotion film interspersed with explicit scenes of male open defecation.

The film was made by renowned Indian film advertising company Genesis run by Prahlad Kakar.

India’s sanitation emergency – Al Jazeera

New Delhi promised to build hundreds of public toilets for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Only 9 were built, and none of them are functioning. This short report from Al Jazeera’s Sohail Rahman highlights the fact that over 50 per cent of Indians have no access to clean toilets. It focuses on the lack of facilities in India’s growing cities and in schools. The report features rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, the inevitable Bindeshwar Pathak of Sulabh International and UNICEF India’s Suzanne Coates.

Bollywood actress becomes India’s sanitation brand ambassador

Vidya Balan, who received the Best Actress National Film Award for her role in 2011 Bollywood hit ‘The Dirty Picture’, will now play a role to alter the real dirty picture in India. Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh has named the Bollywood actress as the brand ambassador in his campaign for improving sanitation [1].

According to India’s 2011 census, nearly half of population have no toilet at home, but more people own a mobile phone [2]. There are 2.1 million toilets in India which rely on manual scavengers to empty them [1].

The Minister hopes that Balan can help turn his campaign to end open defecation into a national obsession:

“it is going to be a very serious commitment on her part – she’s had a dirty picture in reel life, but this will be a clean picture in real life”. [1]

India, Bihar: Poo Highway

The high incidence of open defecation in the Indian state of Bihar is not due to a lack awareness about toilets, according to this new Water for People video. In their view, it’s more of a supply chain, marketing problem.

The toilets on offer are not particularly good.

Until recently, Water for People India had worked mainly in West Bengal state, but in 2011 the NGO expanded into Bihar, where it is collaborating with the local government.

The current sanitation coverage in Bihar is less than 25% with usage percentage much lower, according to the SWASTH (Sector Wide Approach to Strengthening Health) Programme web site. In the district where Water for People will be working, sanitation coverage is only 14%.

Related web site: Water for People – India

Caganers: Sarah Palin and FC Barcelona defecating figurines in 2011 Christmas collection

Sarah Palin. "Made by hand". Photo: Caganer.com

Sarah Palin and the Barcelona football team are among the new figurines in the 2011 Caganer.com collection. Hiding Caganers in nativity scenes is a strong Christmas tradition in Catalonia, Spain, dating back to the 18th century. The defecating figurines symbolise fertilisation, hope and prosperity for the coming year.

The traditional Caganer is portrayed as a Catalan peasant, but since the 1940s figurines of nuns, devils, the Pope, celebrities, historical figures, politicians, and both Spanish and British royalty have been introduced. In 2011, the first moving Caganers were launched.

FC Barcelona. Photo: Caganer.com

Web sites:

• Wikipedia – Caganer
• Caganer.com

Music for Life 2011 – “We do give a shit”

This month, Belgian radio station Studio Brussel is partnering with the Red Cross to raise money for WASH projects in Nepal.

Traditionally, the radio station’s annual “Music for Life” Christmas fundraiser focuses on a “silent disaster”. The theme for 2011 is diarrhoea, together with pneumonia, the leading cause of death for children under the age of five.

Radio Brussel produced this hard-hitting promo video.

The Dutch text reads:

Not every child is lucky enough to become 5 years old
Diarrhoea is the world’s biggest cause of death
for children between 0 and 5 years old.

India – Open defecation “serious threat“ to health

Open defecation “serious threat“ to health: Report

New Delhi, Oct 21 (PTI) Despite an increase in the number of toilets, open defecation remains the single largest threat to health and nutritional status in the country, a report said today.

India Human Development Report 2011, brought out by Institute of Applied Manpower Research of the Planning Commission, also pointed out that a greater proportion of Muslim households compared to SCs/STs had access to sanitation facilities, largely due to their urban concentration.

“Open defecation is a serious threat to health and nutritional status, in addition to the safety of women and girls,” the report, released by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said.
According to the report, about half of Indian households lacked access to sanitation facilities in 2008-09. More than 60 per cent of households in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand were without toilets.

“The situation is more dismal in rural areas, particularly in these states, where more than 75 per cent households do not have toilet facilities. Even if a single household is defecating in the open, that household can be a source of diarrhoea for all households,” it said.

Rural Development Minister Ramesh, who is also holding the portfolio of Drinking Water and Sanitation, said out of six lakh villages in the country, only 25,000 villages have been declared as ”nirmal grams”.
“There is a serious budgetary constraint. We have to get more funding into the sanitation sector. Sanitation is in a bad shape,” he told reporters.

Source

Learning by Doing: Working at Scale in Ethiopia

In the Amhara Region of Ethiopia, the Learning by Doing Initiative (LBDI), a joint project between the Government of Ethiopia, the Amhara Regional Health Bureau, USAID’s Hygiene Improvement Project (HIP), and the Water and Sanitation Program, started at large scale and then expanded, growing from an initial 93,000 households in four districts to include 5.8 million people in 94 districts.  LBDI resulted in 2.8 million more people stopping the practice of open defecation.

In  Learning by Doing: Working at Scale in Ethiopia, Kebede Faris and Julia Rosenbaum summarize key strategies and lessons from LBDI.