User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Guinea

Public toilets in Guinea

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 mix of squat and sit toilets are found, and toilet paper is rarely provided. The typical charge to use a public toilet is GNF (FG) 500.

A not insignificant percentage of men and women from Sierra Leone and Liberia in refugee camps in the Forest Region of Guinea in 1999 believed sexually transmitted diseases could be contracted from using public toilets.

Regional and global situation impacting public toilets in Guinea
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.

German notions of cultural codes around the usage of public toilets has been exported to many parts of the world as a result of German colonialism, but many places in Africa and the Pacific continue to challenge those norms around cleanliness well into the 2010s. Local resistance to toilet cleanliness justified further German repression on the part of the local population during their colonial period.

Public toilets, depending on their design, can be tools of social exclusion. The lack of single-sex women's toilets in developing countries makes it harder for women to participate in public life, in education and in the workplace.

In developing countries, girls are less likely to attend school once they hit puberty if their school does not have adequate hygiene facilities.

Flush toilets are often only found in affluent areas of developing countries.