Have you ever experienced that sense of anxious relief when you finally came across a toilet?

Maybe you have slipped into a cafe to use their toilet without buying anything. Or maybe, like me, the one thing you have wanted more than anything else was a publicly available toilet while you were traveling.

In many ways, these desperate moments we experience every so often offer us glimpses into what it must be like to not have access to a toilet on a daily basis.  Apart from being caught out once in a while, I have always taken it for granted that I could find a toilet somewhere.

So it came as a shock to learn that in Kenya alone, nearly 23 million people use unsanitary or shared latrines, while an additional 5.8 million have no access to latrines at all. In fact, people in Kenya are 4 times more likely to own a cell than to have access to a toilet or latrine. 

But this fact is about more than access to a toilet. For women and girls especially, poor sanitation exposes them to the risk of assault, and when schools fail to provide clean and secure toilets, the attendance of girls starts to drop. It’s estimated that women and girls living without access to a toilet spend97 billionhours each year finding a place to go; while 1 in 3risk being harassed and attacked.

Even in terms of economics, in terms of return on investment, the World Health Organization has estimated the global return on sanitation spending to be as much as USD$34 for every USD$1 invested. Closer access to sanitation and water supply facilities means time savings and reduced queuing, improvements in usable land space, increases in property values, as well as tourism revenue.

But while the social and economic benefits of improved access to sanitation facilities are clear, purchasing the most basic latrines remains out of reach for the 49% of Kenyans who continue to live under the poverty line.

Enter the private sector. Its role has already proved to be highly successful in Bangladesh where 4% of the population currently practice open defecation - down from 42% in 2003. 

A similar program is currently being piloted in Kenya called Selling Sanitation. Supported by the World Bank this initiative works with small-scale entrepreneurs, governments, and consumers to develop sustainable markets for affordable sanitation facilities.

And there are benefits to all concerned. Businesses benefit from market intelligence and can access a previously untapped market, governments benefit from Selling Sanitation’s market facilitation, and, most importantly, consumers gain from more affordable sanitation services.

But as exciting as this initiative is, there are significant boundaries to overcome. One of the biggest is that men, who are the vast majority of household decision-makers in Kenya, have been found not to prioritize buying a latrine over other consumer goods. So although women and girls feel the impact of this lack of access the most, they remain disempowered to make any decisions for the better.

So there seems to be a connection between female disempowerment and the lack of access tolatrines: those who suffer the most from not accessing them are those who are silenced.

This initiatives doesn't promise to overcome these gender-related boundaries, but it does offer hope  to those 5.8 million people who have no access to latrines. Just as you make finding a toilet a priority when you really have to go, let's make global sanitation a priority by signing the Global Sanitation Petition here. 

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William Cuming