World Toilet Day (WTD) is an official United Nations international observance day on 19 November to inspire action to tackle the global sanitation crisis. Worldwide, 4.2 billion people live without “safely managed sanitation” and around 673 million people practice open defecation.
Sustainable Development Goal 6 aims to “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”. In particular, target 6.2 is to “End open defecation and provide access to sanitation and hygiene”.
On 19 November 2001, the NGO World Toilet Organization (WTO) was founded by Jack Sim, a philanthropist from Singapore. He subsequently declared 19 November as World Toilet Day. The name “World Toilet Day” and not “World Sanitation Day” was chosen for ease of public messaging, even though toilets are only the first stage of sanitation systems.
World Toilet Day events and public awareness campaigns increase public awareness of the broader sanitation systems that include wastewater treatment, fecal sludge management, municipal solid waste management, stormwater management, hygiene, and handwashing. Also, the UN Sustainable Development Goals call for more than just toilets. Goal 6 calls for adequate sanitation, which includes the whole system for assuring that waste is safely processed.
The WTO began pushing for global recognition for World Toilet Day and, in 2007, the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) began to actively support World Toilet Day, too. Their efforts to raise attention for the sanitation crisis were bolstered in 2010 when the human right to water and sanitation was officially declared a human right by the UN.
In 2013, a joint initiative between the Government of Singapore and the World Toilet Organization led to Singapore’s first ever UN resolution, named “Sanitation for All”. The resolution calls for collective action to end the world’s sanitation crisis. World Toilet Day was declared an official UN day in 2013. That resolution was adopted by 122 countries at the 67th session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2016. On World Toilet Day on 19 November 2015, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged broad action to renew efforts to provide access to adequate sanitation for all. He reminded everyone of the “Call to Action on Sanitation” which was launched in 2013, and the aim to end open defecation by 2025. He also said, “By many accounts, sanitation is the most-missed target of the Millennium Development Goals.”