Opening address by H.E. Ms. Dessima Williams, Special Adviser on behalf of H.E. Mr. Peter Thomson, President of the 71st Session of the General Assembly, at Reception to commemorate the World Toilet Day
21 November 2016
Excellences, ladies and gentlemen,
It is my great pleasure to address this commemorative event of World Toilet Day 2016, on behalf of H.E. Mr. Peter Thomson, President of the General Assembly.
For your continued leadership on this important issue, I would like to thank H.E. Mr. Burhan Gafoor, Permanent Representative of Singapore to the United Nations, as well as UN Agencies involved in the preparation of this Event, especially UNICEF.
I commend the choice of the theme for this year’s commemoration, “Toilets and Jobs”. This gives us an opportunity to address social and economic issues relating to having or not having adequate toilets. We note the impact on girls and women.
I am returning from COP22 in Marrakech, where World Leaders celebrated the early entry into force of the Paris Agreement. There, President Thomson maintained his commitment to sustaining strong momentum built around the complementary agendas of climate change and the 2030 Development Agenda.
The implementation of these frameworks, if done in an urgent and effective manner, could help eliminate extreme poverty, provide decent work, build stronger economies, and inclusive and safer societies everywhere. Complementary implementation can also strengthen efforts towards reaching specific goals and targets, including those related to clean water and sanitation.
Excellences,
We know that over 90% of the world now has access to improved sources of drinking water –and although that progress is significant, we still have work to do to get to 100%.
So too, a similar challenge lies with access to toilets. We know that about two thirds of the world’s population has full and adequate access to toilets but that about one third of the world’s population, especially persons in the rural areas of many developing countries, are forced to defecate in the open. Simultaneously, there is high rural joblessness. This twin issue is of deep concern.
Furthermore, we cannot tolerate the fact that hundreds of children die each day from water-related diseases and poor sanitation, while women and children are denied access to toilet facilities and are unable to safely manage their basic bodily functions. This represents a denial of their fundamental human rights, and ultimately distort their essential well-being.
We should look at lack of toilets, addressed under SDG Goal No. 6, and lack of employment, captured under SDG Goal No.8, as challenges that are opportunities for all those who are engaged in building appropriate infrastructure, including water and sanitation facilities. Providing toilets can mean providing jobs to build, install and maintain them.
Governments, the private sector and civil society, cities and local authorities need to come together, through reinvigorated partnerships to achieve more toilet access. This could be an opportunity to create further decent jobs across the whole supply chain and could have a positive impact. Economic costs from poor sanitation are very high and conversely, adequate sanitation could save resources for other priorities.
We should work to mainstream access to sanitation in policies related to infrastructure, and, in the main to build awareness about this.
There is one other connection: providing sanitation for workers in the workplace, offers appropriate working conditions that enhance worker productivity and well-being and is thus good for business.
In his strategic plan for SDG’s implementation, the President of the General Assembly dedicated special attention to SDG 6, including by engaging key partners for progress around transformative water-use and sanitation technologies that will increase access to toilets, to safe and affordable drinking water and to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene.
The President is currently traveling and will participate in the World Water Summit to be held in Budapest, on 28 November 2016. This gathering provides an opportunity to further build political momentum and put in place concrete strategies and partnerships to meet SDG 6, including its target related to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all.
Excellences,
I understand that there are partners here who will be speaking about toilet innovation; I am keen to hear and to see how we can work with you and any other movers and shakers in the audience.
I want to end by saying that I myself have used dry toilets over twenty years in the home of very wealthy American family in their transition to greater household sustainability. I can report that dry toilets do work. In my hometown in Grenada, we suffer a lack of adequate public toilets and I look forward to innovations such as dry toilets to reach this community.
Let us leave our children a better world, where they could enjoy prosperity and live in safe and resilient cities, peaceful and just societies – all with adequate toilets. I thank you.