Why toilets matter
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Happy World Toilet Day! It is that day of the year when we all need to overcome our embarrassment and discuss what is normally a taboo topic. Hundreds of millions of people still have no access to a toilet, putting them at risk of disease, sexual assault and public humiliation.
Tamasin Ford speaks to the inventor of World Toilet Day, Jack Sim, about how much has been achieved since he founded his World Toilet Organisation 20 years ago to promote discussion of this topic. We also hear from Catarina de Albuquerque, who served as the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation, and made it one of the UN's sustainable development goals.
Also, consultant Timeyin Uwejamomere talks about the challenge of introducing proper sanitation in the slums of his native Nigeria. Plus Chilufya Chileshe, policy director at the charity WaterAid, explains how the lack of a toilet leaves women and girls vulnerable to sexual harassment, and interferes with their education.
(Photo: An eco-friendly mobile toilet in Johannesburg, South Africa. Credit: Deon Raath/Galo Images/Rapport)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Tamerson Ford. |
| 0:03.0 | Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:06.0 | Today is World Toilet Day. |
| 0:09.0 | But why in 2021 is going to the toilet still such a taboo topic? |
| 0:15.0 | I'm calling for everybody to talk about toilets as if it is a normal subject from drinking and eating, |
| 0:24.9 | because what goes in does come out. |
| 0:28.1 | And why is it always women and girls who are disproportionately affected by the lack of them? |
| 0:34.0 | The study in East Africa has documented what they have been calling sex distortion, |
| 0:38.9 | where girls have to pay to utilise toilet facilities by sex, |
| 0:44.0 | or sometimes they're actually abused against their will. |
| 0:47.3 | That's In Business Daily from the BBC. If that's a sound that happens in your home multiple times a day, |
| 1:05.2 | then you are among the lucky half of the world who has access to a properly working toilet. |
| 1:11.7 | 20 years ago, when we first started the World Toilet Organization, there were no media coverage |
| 1:18.9 | about sanitation. My name is Jack Sim. I'm the founder of the World Toilet Organization |
| 1:26.2 | with the acronym of WTO. |
| 1:29.3 | And it placed a ban on the World Trade Organization and got the attention of the global media. |
| 1:36.6 | They were at that time so uncomfortable to talk about toilets, poop, pee, sanitation. |
| 1:44.7 | So we put it on centre stage, |
| 1:47.7 | and the media loves our unique blend of humour and serious facts. |
| 1:53.6 | While the media might well love it, |
| 1:55.4 | 20 years on from the planet's first world toilet day, |
| 1:59.9 | toilets and everything we as humans do with one |
... |
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