UN General Assembly’s “Sustainable sanitation: the drive to 2015”,

UN General Assembly’s “Sustainable sanitation: the drive to 2015”,

General Assembly have adopted a resolution on "‪#‎Sanitation‬ for All", officially designating 19 November as‪#‎WorldToiletDay‬. This new annual observance will go a long way toward raising awareness about the need for all human beings to have access to sanitation.

Despite progress toward the Millennium Development Goals, one in three people do not have a basic toilet. Almost 2,000 children die every day from preventable diarrhoeal diseases. Poor sanitation and water supply result in economic losses estimated at $260 billion annually in developing countries.

In ‪#‎India‬, 600 million people defecate in the open, contaminating their environments and water sources and spreading diseases like diarrhoea, which kills 1000 children under 5 every day.

Proper sanitation is also a question of basic dignity. It is unacceptable that women have to risk being the victims of rape and abuse, just to do something that most of us take for granted. It is also unacceptable that many girls are pushed out of school for lack of basic sanitation facilities.

This new resolution builds on the General Assembly’s “Sustainable sanitation: the drive to 2015”, agreed in 2010, and adds momentum to the Call to Action on Sanitation that I, on behalf of the Secretary-General, launched in March this year.

UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson urges every country to accelerate progress towards a world in which everyone enjoys this most basic of rights.

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