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User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Afghanistan

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Public toilets in Afghanistan
Hole
A pit latrine toilet at a school in 2009
Language of toilets
Local wordsWC
Men's toiletsMen
Women's toiletsWomen
Public toilet statistics
Toilets per 100,000 people??? (2021)
Total toilets??
Public toilet use
Type???
Locationsmosques
Average cost???
Often equipped with???
Percent accessible???
Date first modern public toilets???
.

Public toilets in Afghanistan can often be found in mosques and are not very clean. Some of the first public toilets appeared in the late 1800s. Women have faced issues with public toilets in Afghanistan.

Public toilets

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Public toilets can sometimes be found in mosques. A lack of available cleaning supplies and being one of the few public toilets around means these toilets can often be dirty.[1] Public toilets can also be found at airports. Most are squat toilets.[2] The most common toilet type among all toilets is a raised drop latrine.  This setup is even used in multistory buildings.[3]

History

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In the late 1800s, Abdur Rahman Khan ordered the construction of public toilets in Kabul.[4] The first public pay toilets arrived in Afghanistan in the 1970s.[5]

For women traveling via long distance bus in the 1980s, it was often difficult to use the toilet during rest breaks as women required finding a bush or some other form of privacy before engaging in open defecation compared to men who could engage in that more openly.[6] In the 2000s, there were few public toilets for women. In some airports, public toilets were unisex but tended to be filled with men; women often just held it rather than use them.[2]

In the 2000s, India was involved with development schemes inside Afghanistan, with some of these schemes involving the construction of public toilets.[7] For their own safety in the 2010s, female police officers often went to public toilets in pairs.[8] There were 35 public toilets in Kabul in 2011.[9]

Regional and global situation impacting public toilets in Afghanistan

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A toilet block at a US military base in Afghanistan

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.[10]

Public toilets, depending on their design, can be tools of social exclusion.[11] 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.[11]

References

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  1. ^ Lachapelle, Nancy (2009-11-25). MESSAGES FROM AFGHANISTAN. Xlibris Corporation. ISBN 978-1-4628-1608-8.
  2. ^ a b Travis, P. B. (2013-12-03). Kabul Classroom: Memoir of an American Teacher in Afghanistan. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-0623-1.
  3. ^ Hardoy, Jorge E.; Mitlin, Diana; Satterthwaite, David (2013-11-05). Environmental Problems in an Urbanizing World: Finding Solutions in Cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-20078-8.
  4. ^ Roberts, Jeffery J. (2003). The Origins of Conflict in Afghanistan. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-275-97878-5.
  5. ^ Selendy, Janine M. H. (2011-10-07). Water and Sanitation-Related Diseases and the Environment: Challenges, Interventions, and Preventive Measures. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-14860-0.
  6. ^ Gershenson, Olga; Penner, Barbara (2009-07-15). Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender. Temple University Press. ISBN 978-1-59213-940-8.
  7. ^ Awotona, Adenrele (2019-06-11). Rebuilding Afghanistan in Times of Crisis: A Global Response. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-33400-6.
  8. ^ Perez, Caroline Criado (2019-03-07). Invisible Women: the Sunday Times number one bestseller exposing the gender bias women face every day. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4735-4829-9.
  9. ^ Baker, Barry (2011-10-18). World Development: An Essential Text. New Internationalist. ISBN 978-1-78026-037-2.
  10. ^ Glassman, Stephanie; Firestone, Julia (May 2022). "Restroom Deserts: Where to go when you need to go" (PDF). AARP.
  11. ^ a b Das, Maitreyi Bordia (19 November 2017). "The tyranny of toilets". World Bank. Retrieved 14 October 2022.