United Nations Marked World Water Day with 'Toilet Campaign' Launch Al Jazeera
go to original March 24, 2013

The United Nations has launched a campaign to lift a deadly taboo on talking about toilets and to turn the world into an "open defecation-free zone". (AlJazeeraEnglish)

The United Nations has launched a campaign to lift a deadly taboo on talking about toilets and to turn the world into an "open defecation-free zone". The move was part of activities to mark last week's World Water Day.

The initiative aims to cut the 3,000 children under five who die each day from water-borne diseases like cholera, dysentry and diarrhea, and the 2.5 billion people without access to a toilet.

"Here is a silent disaster which needs to have attention," UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, a pioneer in unsanitised talk about toilets, said on Friday.

"There is an element of taboo around toilets and open defecation," Eliasson, who recalled a speech to the UN General Assembly in 2010, said.

"There was a little bit of 'hmmm hmmm' murmuring in the hall. I finished the speech with the word 'toilet.' It was not very common in the UN. The words which I will speak more and more often now is: 'open defecation.'"

Read the rest at Al Jazeera

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