Global Political Sanitation Alliances
Former Prime Minister of Australia
IF WE ARE concerned about lifting the world’s population out of poverty, we cannot do so without addressing the world’s problem of having safe drinking water and sanitation for all. It is the fundamental precondition. Others are important. This is essential .
I travelled to the Mahatma Gandhi International Sanitation Conference in New Delhi in September 2018 for a number of reasons. The first is that I am a great admirer of the Mahatma. We know him as the father of India’s independence. We know him as the architect of non-violent political resistance around the world. But it was his passion for sanitation and cleanliness and hygiene in India’s rural villages that truly sets him apart. Gandhi said, ‘Sanitation is more important than political independence.’ Imagine the strength in that statement, almost a century ago.
Gandhi also wrote, reflecting on his observations of the sacred river Ganges in 1919, ‘I had gone there [to the Ganges] full of hope and reverence but while I realised the grandeur of holy Ganga and the holier Himalayas, I saw little to inspire me in what man was doing to this holy place.’
‘To my great grief,’ he said, ‘I discovered in sanitation, both moral and physical … There is defilement of the mighty stream even in the name of religion … Thoughtless ignorant men and women use for natural functions the sacred banks of the river where they are supposed to sit in quiet contemplation and find God. They violate religion, science and the laws of sanitation.’
In May 1925, he wrote about the importance of keeping lavatories clean: ‘The cause of many of our diseases is the condition of our lavatories and our bad habit of disposing of excreta anywhere and everywhere. I, therefore, believe in the absolute necessity of a clean place for answering the call of nature and clean articles for use at the time.’
In 1937, Gandhi received a letter asking what he thought was an ideal village and what problems he believed plagued the villages of India. Gandhi’s response was: ‘An ideal village will be so constructed as to lend itself to perfect sanitation … The very first problem the village worker will solve is its sanitation.’
Gandhi’s views on water sanitation were remarkable and visionary. He wrestled with great challenges in his time: getting rid of the British and cleaning up India. These were both noble causes in themselves, and he tackled them together. Mahatma Gandhi, for all of us, is seen as a great Indian nationalist. But he’s also a great Indian internationalist – the whole world was part of his conscience.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Government has continued in Mahatma Gandhi’s footsteps in pursuit of Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6). The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) was launched in 2014 from the Red Fort in Delhi as a statement to the people of India.
Since October 2014, 97 million toilets have been built in India (as of June 2019). Over 99 per cent of the population has access to a toilet compared to less than 40 per cent back in 2014. Over 622 districts in the country are classified as Open Defecation Free (ODF). Given the progress achieved thus far, it is estimated that SBM will have helped avert more than 300,000 deaths caused by diarrhoea, and protein energy malnutrition, between 2014 and when the programme draws to its conclusion in October of 2019 (WHO 2018). Unsafe sanitation caused an estimated 199 million cases of diarrhoea annually before the start of the Mission in 2014. These figures are now coming down.
None of this happens for free, of course. It comes at a cost. This is where the national political leadership comes in. It also requires the implementing bodies to deploy innovative sources of financing. Swachh Bharat has thus far required an investment of some US $20 billion. There’s a message in that for all of us.
I write in my capacity as the Global High-level Chair of Sanitation and Water for All. This is an important partnership of over 200 governments, donors, civil society and private sector groups, research and learning institutions, and other development partners. We are a global family, and our partnership embraces the cause of sanitation and financing in countries around the world, and their aforementioned partners. If Mahatma Gandhi were alive today, he would see this as his mission.
Our aim is simple, but it is challenging: to turn SDG 6 into a reality. We can talk about it. We can think about it. We can have a lot of conferences at the United Nations about it. But unless we make it work, our people will continue to suffer. SDG 6 is about sanitation and water for all, to achieve which India’s success is critical.
Many of our member states have seen great progress. For example, Ghana’s Sanitation and Water Ministers recently launched a national sanitation and water programme to great acclaim. Their Mission statement was to ‘Make Ghana the India of Africa’.
In Afghanistan, we now have developed separate budget lines for sanitation after the Afghan Finance Minister participated in our SWA High-level Meeting of finance ministers at the World Bank in 2017. The budget line helps them to clearly identify the resources necessary to turn universal sanitation into reality. They’ve also developed a Citizen’s Charter that includes WASH as a priority. In fact, it is now a National Priority programme. We see the same in Burkina Faso, where the ministers responsible for water, sanitation and hygiene and finance jointly created a national platform to centralize WASH processes and provide innovative financing.
In Ethiopia, we see the ‘One WASH’ programme gathering momentum across the country. These countries are among many where progress is being achieved, taking inspiration from India’s Swachh Bharat Mission.
How do you turn a vision into reality? Our vision is SDG 6. So what are the essential preconditions for making it work?
Central to the sanitation agenda is the importance of all the above for women. Unless we deal with this, we are failing our sisters across the world. Without access to clean drinking water, there are now nearly 300 million people, almost all women, carrying water to their families. This means young girls are not going to school. Or having gone to school, they have no opportunity to work because they’re still burdened with this labour. Secondly, without access to safe sanitation at the household level, women are still compelled to defecate in the open, running the risk of being physically attacked or sexually assaulted. This is a problem across the world.
There is still another reason why sanitation is paramount for women: menstrual hygiene, a subject that in many cultures is often difficult to address. Unless we deal with the problem of providing adequate sanitation facilities for our sisters and for young girls across the world, this will remain a massive problem. A recent World Health Organization survey in India said that 43 per cent of Indian women did not have access to sanitary essentials at the beginning of periods. All of us, men included, need to become comfortable talking about these things in our politics.
There is nothing more fundamental for humankind than sanitation. The mission for us all has been laid out in the SDGs. We have the technology. We know how to bring about behavioural change. But the key element is finance – public, private or at the community level. All made possible through political will at the highest levels of political leadership. And in this, India stands out as an example for us all.