A/HRC/12/24 page 5 sanitation by 2015, but progress even towards this limited target is slow. The Joint Monitoring Programme, run by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), estimates that, unless efforts are greatly accelerated, the target on sanitation will be missed by over 700 million people.4 Even if this target was met, 1.8 billion people would still not have access to improved sanitation,5 which is an intolerable situation. 2008 was declared the International Year of Sanitation, which helped to put sanitation in the spotlight and led to the launch of several initiatives to more vigorously address the current crisis. However, despite commendable efforts by United Nations agencies and other actors, sanitation remains severely underfunded and neglected at all levels. 6. In her report to the tenth session of the Human Rights Council, the independent expert briefly explained that lack of access to sanitation has disastrous consequences for people’s health, education, the economy, gender equality, and overall development.6 Lack of access to sanitation is overwhelmingly a problem of the poor, with women and children suffering the most. In fact, for industrialized nations, ensuring access to sanitation was a turning point in their development, having a profound effect on reducing child mortality and improving overall public health. In this regard, there is a strong correlation between lack of access to sanitation and a low rating on the human development index. Investing in sanitation has a remarkable impact on overall poverty reduction, particularly helping to reduce the number of work and school days lost due to illness. Recent research estimates that, for every dollar invested in sanitation, there is about a nine-dollar benefit in costs averted and productivity gained.7 7. With such a positive impact, why does the sanitation sector still suffer from such a lack of attention? The taboo surrounding sanitation is one of the biggest obstacles it faces. For most people, sanitation is a highly private matter and an uncomfortable topic for public discussion. As a result of the failure to prioritize sanitation, there is also a lack of effective national policies, diverse and fragmented responsibilities for sanitation across government ministries, and a general lack of understanding of the positive effects of investing in sanitation. It is important to bring this issue to the fore and tackle the taboo that surrounds it. Speaking honestly and openly about faeces and defecating may indeed change the lives, and restore a sense of dignity, of millions of people. 4 JMP report (2008) 1, p. 8. 5 See the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2006, “Beyond scarcity: power, poverty and the global water crisis”, p. 4. 6 7 See A/HRC/10/6 (providing a detailed explanation of the decision to focus on sanitation). See the WHO and UNDP report on “Economic and health effects of increasing coverage of low cost household drinking-water supply and sanitation interventions to countries off-track to meet MDG target 10” (2007), p. 20.