A/HRC/33/49
water-related diseases. States must prioritize water and sanitation provision to households
not yet served and, in particular, those households where women and girls have the least
adequate alternatives.
44.
Where it is not yet possible to have access to services on site, it is important to scale
up the construction of safe and nearby community toilets. As mentioned above, there is a
multitude of psychosocial stress factors that women face owing to unsafe, inadequate or
absent sanitation facilities. To reduce the risk of women and girls experiencing violence,
building codes for community water and sanitation facilities should include gender
considerations such as sex-segregated cubicles, closeness to the house and lighted pathways
to and at facilities. The location should also make it possible for a concierge to be present
and monitor the surroundings.45 It is important to note, however, that building safer latrines
in or close to households does not eliminate the risk of gender-based violence, as the
measure does not address the root causes of violence. As outlined by the Water Supply and
Sanitation Collaborative Council, adequate sanitation without attention to gendered
relations of power puts the burden of safety on women and does not address gender-based
patterns of violence against women, which require a far more structural approach. 46
Building safer facilities may sometimes, however, take away a burden for women and girls
to visit public toilets that provide for privacy and safety. In this context, WaterAid has
developed a toolkit for practitioners.47
2.
Extra-household access
45.
Human rights law requires that sanitation facilities be reliably accessible to satisfy
all needs throughout the day and the night, and meet the needs of their users. A lack of
adequate facilities in public spaces often leads women and girls to avoid the public and both
work and school life, particularly during menstruation, when they live with disabilities or
suffer from incontinence.
46.
Worldwide, there are more possibilities for men than for women to relieve
themselves outside the house. Examples include the plenty free-to-use urinals for men in
the capital of the Netherlands. 48 In India, public facilities for men outnumber those for
women by up to 42 per cent.49 The construction of public urinals to tackle open urination by
men is relatively easy, as such urinals do not need to have doors and locks, have no seat to
turn up, generally use less water and are therefore a relatively cheaper solution. States must
set targets to scale up adequate public sanitation facilities for women and girls.
47.
Human rights law requires that a sufficient number of sanitation facilities be
available with associated services to ensure that waiting times are not unreasonably long.
Many public facilities have an identical number of stalls for men and women, although in
practice women and girls often have to wait in long lines to use the toilet, while men have
much quicker access. The clothes women tend to wear and have to take off using the toilet
require more time than for men, and women spend time assisting children using the toilet.
45
46
47
48
49
AquaFed and others and Germany, Federal Foreign Office, submissions to the Special Rapporteur.
Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, “Sanitation vulnerabilities: women’s stresses and
struggles for violence-free sanitation”, briefing note No. 2 (2015).
See http://violence-wash.lboro.ac.uk/.
See www.joostdevree.nl/bouwkunde2/jpgs/straatmeubilair_21_brochure_krullen_
in_amsterdam_urinoirs_www_cornelissenamsterdam_nl.pdf.
Miriam Hartmann and others, “Gender-responsive sanitation solutions in urban India”, (RTI Press,
2015).
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