Ensuring Women and Girls’ Rights to Water and Sanitation Post-2015

Abstract

Access to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a universal right and central to human wellbeing and development. Yet ensuring this right for all, particularly women and girls who are often systematically excluded, will require international efforts to move beyond the current Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Water and sanitation must be placed at the heart of a post 2015 development framework, and much greater emphasis placed on issues of equity, discrimination, sustainability, politics and local knowledge.