User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Cote d'Ivoire

Public toilets in Cote d'Ivoire are few and far between. They are often dirty and lack toilet paper. This mirrors a broader issue of the lack of adequate toilet facilities in general.

Public toilets
A French speaking country, the local words for toilets include toilettes and WC, while the local word for toilet paper is Papier toilette, the word for men's toilet is hommes and the word for women's toilet is femmes.

A 2021 study found there was one public toilet per 100,000 people. There are very few public toilets. When they are available, they often lack basic amenities like running water and toilet paper. They also tend to be very dirty. The most common place to find a public toilet is a mosque, which may have a public urinal or public toilet.

At the same time that the country lacks public toilets, 42% of the population in 2016 lacked access to adequate toilet facilities. Many people lack access to safe drinking water in the country. 35% of the rural population did not have access to it in 2016. 85.9% of adult women were responsible for fetching water on a daily basis for their family. Girls under the age of 15 were often tasked with the job of fetching water for their family, with 7.5% of girls that age engaging in that activity.

Rotary District 9101 District Governor Sunny Akoupha set a goal in March 2022 of building over 1,000 new public toilets between then and 2027. District 1190, which includes parts of Cumbria, Lancashire, Brampton and Longtown, offered to assist the Mali based project. The first twelve toilets scheduled to be constructed were to be built in Bamako. Others were planned for other cities in Mali, and in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast.

When toilets existed in rural areas in 2016, they were often built using old cement blocks or constructed from palm branches and sticks.

Regional and global situation impacting public toilets in Cote d'Ivoire
Around 2.5 billion people around the world in 2018 did not have access to adequate toilet facilities. Around 4.5 billion people lacked access to proper sanitation. Public toilet access around the world is most acute in the Global South, with around 3.6 billion people, 40% of the world's total population, lacking access to any toilet facilities. 2.3 people in the the Global South do not have toilet facilities in their residence. Despite the fact that the United Nation made a declaration in 2010 that clean water and sanitation is a human right, little has been done in many places towards addressing this on a wider level.

Across Africa, open defecation had social consequences. These included loss of dignity and privacy. It also put women at risk of sexual violence. An issue in developing countries is toilet access in schools. Only 46% of schools in developing countries have them. Many schools around the world in 2018 did not have toilets, with the problem particularly acute in parts of Africa and Asia. Only one in five primary schools on earth had a toilet and only one in eight secondary schools had public toilets. 344 million children in sub-Saharan Africa did not have a toilet in their home in 2018. The lack of toilet access put these children at risk of water borne diseases.

There are generally two toilet styles in public bathrooms in Africa. One is a traditional squat toilet. The other is a western style toilet with bowl and a place to sit.