World Toilet Day: Lack of Toilets related to sexual violence on women.

 

 

Rutba Iqbal / Awaz e Khwateen

On the evening of May 27, 2014 the nation was jostled by the double rape and lynching of two young girls in Katra Sahadatganj, Uttar Pradesh. The young girls, 12 and 14 years old were cousins, they had ventured out into an open field that served as their bathroom. The girls were found hanging from a mango tree, brutally raped. The double rape exposed the caste violence prevelant in India but it also gave us a hint about the threat women from marginalized communities face while performing the most normal bodily function.

Nearly half the world’s population who lack access to improved sanitation conditions reside in India, according to a 2015 UNICEF/WHO report. Almost half a billion Indians defecate in the open and about 300 million women and girls in India have no access to bathroom, making them vulnerable to sexual violence.

WaterAid, an international non-governmental organisation listed lack of safe toilets among top five killers of women worldwide. Women spend approximately 97 billion hours per annum looking for a safe place to relieve themselves. When they do find a secluded and private place to relieve themselves, they expose themselves to the dangers of harassment or worse, rape. It was reported in 2014, 630 million Indian girls' homes have no toilet, forcing them out into the dark, exposing them to wild animals and, on that night, rapists and murderers.

"Open defecation places women at uniquely higher risk of one type of sexual violence: non-partner," pointed Approva Jadhav from the University of Michigan in a research paper published in the November issue of Bio-Med Central Journal in 2016. In-home toilets can result in increasing the safety of girls and women. In-home toilets reduce exposure time of women outside their homes at late nights in secluded areas with less security. This directly results in a reduction in crimes targeted towards women

Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) is a country-wide campaign initiated by the Government of India in 2014 to eliminate open defecation and improve solid waste management. An estimated 89.9 million toilets were built under SBM by October, 2019. An independent survey released by Quality Council of India in August 2017, reported that overall national rural "household access to toilet" coverage increased to 62.5% and usage of toilets to 91.3%. These numbers can be directly linked to an increased number of women having access to private and safer means to relieve themselves.

A study by Ashoka University concluded that the construction of toilets under the program led to a reduction in incidence of sexual assault against women. The study related the lack of toilet facilities in Indian households (when members use bush or pit latrines to relieve themselves) to non-family violence against Indian women.

A woman has the right to have a safe and clean toilet, it directly impacts their right to live with dignity, but providing women with toilets is only the first step to ensure their usage. Policies aiming at better infrastructure and increased sanitation can only cement the sanitation campaigns of the previous decade.