2026 Messages
UN-Water Chair's message
The global sanitation crisis affects everyone – but not equally.
For women and girls, it is deeply personal and often dangerous.
3.4 billion people – half of them women and girls – still live without safe toilets.
Using unclean or failing sanitation services – or having no toilet at all – exposes them to disease, violence and abuse and prevents them from safely managing menstruation.
This negatively impacts women and girls’ rights to health, education and work, deepening gender inequality.
World Toilet Day 2026 is about sanitation’s foundational role in gender equality.
Safe and secure toilets, alongside soap, water and menstrual hygiene facilities, can empower girls to learn and women to earn – driving more equitable progress across the whole community.
Put simply, safe toilets mean equal futures.
Women’s voices and agency must shape the path ahead, as we work tirelessly to ensure services work for everybody and no-one is left behind.
Together we can make toilets a force for equality that benefits everyone, everywhere, without discrimination.
Alvaro Lario
Chair of UN-Water and President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
Put simply, safe toilets mean equal futures. Women’s voices and agency must shape the path ahead, as we work tirelessly to ensure services work for everybody and no-one is left behind.
Alvaro Lario
