World Toilet Day | United Nations

World Toilet Day 2026 is about sanitation and gender equality. The campaign – ‘Safe toilets. Equal futures.’ – shows how safe sanitation protects women and girls’ health, safety, dignity and opportunity – enabling them to go to school, work and fully take part in society.
With access to safe and secure toilets, alongside soap, water and menstrual hygiene facilities, girls can learn and women can earn.
In hospitals and clinics, sanitation and hygiene services protect women patients and health care workers, supporting better health outcomes for all.
In public spaces, from markets to transport hubs, toilets support women and girls’ mobility, independence and participation.
There are 3.4 billion people living without access to safe sanitation, but not everyone faces the same impacts.
Lack of access to safe sanitation reinforces gender inequality by exposing women and girls to diseases, danger and abuse, affecting their rights to health, education and work.
Using unclean or broken toilets – or having to go outside – causes stigma and shame, affecting women and girls’ self-confidence and security.
Climate change and extreme weather events are making the sanitation crisis worse in many areas – and when services are disrupted, women and girls pay the heaviest price.
Women must help shape sanitation solutions, working alongside men to design, manage and deliver services that work for everybody.
The participation of women, girls and other groups disproportionately affected by unsafe sanitation – including older people, persons with disabilities, and gender-diverse people – is essential to building resilient services that leave no one behind.
We must invest in gender-responsive sanitation and make toilets a force for equality that benefits everyone, everywhere, without discrimination.
Download resources and inspire action. Help raise awareness of the link between sanitation and gender equality.
Explore the UN-Water archive of World Toilet Day campaigns going back to 2014, covering a range of themes, including climate, wastewater, nature-based solutions, and peace.
There is no single UN entity dedicated exclusively to water issues. Over 30 UN organizations carry out water and sanitation programs, reflecting the fact that water issues run through all of the UN’s main focus areas. UN-Water’s role is to coordinate them all so that the UN family ‘delivers as one’ in response to water-related challenges. Check its site related to the topic of this year about the relation between water and gender.
The UN World Water Development Report 2026: “Water for All People – Equal Rights and Opportunities” shows how gender inequality still shapes, and is shaped by, the global water and sanitation crisis, and sets out inclusive, gender-responsive approaches to drive progress.
International days and weeks are occasions to educate the public on issues of concern, to mobilize political will and resources to address global problems, and to celebrate and reinforce achievements of humanity. The existence of international days predates the establishment of the United Nations, but the UN has embraced them as a powerful advocacy tool. We also mark other UN observances.