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User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Palau

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Public toilets in Palau
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???
Locations???
Average cost???
Often equipped with???
Percent accessible???
Date first modern public toilets???
.

Public toilets in Palau are few. Efforts have been underway to improve them, but there have been some setbacks.

Public toilets[edit]

Palau needs more public toilets.[1] Toilets were located in some businesses like supermarkets, but these were not always intended for the public.[1]

In 2007, the national government launched a program talking up the benefits of sanitation, including invisible benefits like poor health, reduced educational opportunities and loss of dignity.[2] As part of efforts to improve the tourism sector, the government built seven composting toilets.[3] The Asian Development Bank provided funding to help improve public toilets in Koror in the 2020s, committing USD$30 million to a broader sanitation project which the public toilets were part of.[4][5][6] The Environmental Quality Protection Board put a moratorium on new connections for the Koror-Airai Public Sewer System in February 2016. The moratorium did not impact the installation of plumbing for toilets and bathrooms at hotels under construction.[7]

Regional and global situation impacting public toilets in Palau[edit]

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.[8]

Foreigners visiting the South Pacific in the 1990s were advised to bring their own white toilet paper, and tampons or sanitary napkins as they were not commonly found in the region.[8] Septic systems and any sewage systems were not strong enough in the 1990s for tampons to be thrown into them.[9]

Around one in three women in the world in 2016 lacked access to a toilet.[10] In developing countries, unisex public toilets have been a disaster because they make women feel unsafe and fail to consider local religious beliefs.[11]

German notions of cultural codes around the usage of public toilets has been exported to many parts of the world as a result of German colonialism, but many places in Africa and the Pacific continue to challenge those norms around cleanliness well into the 2010s. Local resistance to toilet cleanliness justified further German repression on the part of the local population during their colonial period.[12]

In the 1980s and 1990s, many people in the Pacific region had the misconception that HIV and AIDS could be transmitted by using public toilets.[13]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Jackson, Lucinda (2022-04-12). Project Escape: Lessons for an Unscripted Life. She Writes Press. ISBN 978-1-64742-404-6.
  2. ^ UN.ESCAP (2009). Institutional changes for sanitation: discussion paper on the institutional changes required to achieve the MDG target on sanitation. United Nations. ISBN 978-92-1-120581-7.
  3. ^ "▪ DIFFERING PERSPECTIVES ON THE PROBLEM". issuu. Retrieved 2022-10-20.
  4. ^ adbheadhoncho (2013-11-19). "Koror-Airai Sanitation Project". Asian Development Bank. Retrieved 2022-10-20.
  5. ^ Asian Development Bank (2022). "ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK MEMBER FACT SHEET: Palau" (PDF). Asian Development Bank.
  6. ^ "Closer Partnership". The Fiji Times. 28 January 2020. Retrieved 2022-10-20.
  7. ^ Jun 27; Regional, 2016 | (2016-06-26). "Sewer system connections in Palau remain under moratorium". Marianas Business Journal. Retrieved 2022-10-20. {{cite web}}: |first2= has numeric name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  8. ^ a b Glassman, Stephanie; Firestone, Julia (May 2022). "Restroom Deserts: Where to go when you need to go" (PDF). AARP.
  9. ^ Stanley, David (1996). South Pacific Handbook. David Stanley. ISBN 978-1-56691-040-8.
  10. ^ Lijster, Michiel de. "10 Reasons We Should Care About Toilets". blogs.adb.org. Retrieved 2022-10-16.
  11. ^ Coles, Anne; Gray, Leslie; Momsen, Janet (2015-02-20). The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Development. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-09478-3.
  12. ^ Walther, Daniel J (2017-11-14). "Race, Space and Toilets: 'Civilization' and 'Dirt' in the German Colonial Order, 1890s–1914*". German History. 35 (4): 551–567. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghx102. ISSN 0266-3554.
  13. ^ Jenkins, Carol; Buchanan, Holly R. (2007). Cultures and Contexts Matter: Understanding and Preventing HIV in the Pacific. Asian Development Bank. ISBN 978-971-561-618-8.