Dedicated to the United Nations' Millennium Development Targets, Terre des hommes fights against the deplorable state of progress in sanitation in the world, principally in Asia and sub-Sahara Africa.


The solutions proposed by Terre des hommes

In emergencies, Terre des hommes (Tdh) installs in villages or camps for displaced persons, systems for access to drinking water (units for mobile processing, reservoirs, distribution) and communal latrines, so as to avoid the start of epidemics. In its development projects, Tdh does an important job in promoting hygiene and education in this field. Within the communities, young mothers are particularly encouraged to use boiled water for making up their babies' food.

Then, when restoring or improving sanitation systems and the access to water, Tdh organizes the construction and sinking of wells and the networks for distribution of drinking water and the installation of family latrines and showers, discharge of used water, collection and disposal of waste material. Similarly, Tdh strengthens local skills with training courses and sessions for awareness so as to guarantee the proper, sustainable maintenance of these structures.


International Year of Sanitation

Motivated by the UNO's decision to declare 2008 the International Year of Sanitation, special attention was paid to improvement of sanitation, a fundamental aspect of the right to health and dignity. In 2008, Tdh built, for example, more than 1,300 communal latrines in schools in the Andaman Islands, in Andhra Pradesh (India) and in Myanmar, as well as family latrines in Haiti, Peru and in Bangladesh (ecological sanitation).

In 2008, 107,000 people benefited, and bit by bit regained their dignity, thanks to the use of suitable infrastructures for the collecting, dealing with and disposing of human excreta and wasted water, and from programs of awareness-raising and promotion of hygiene given to the communities.


Results achieved

On August 15th, 2007, three quarters of the town of Pisco in Peru was razed to the ground by an earthquake. One and a half years later, some 5,000 persons have regular access to water and more than 200 individual latrines have been built; and nearly one thousand children now live under markedly improved conditions of hygiene. The issue of water distribution could be achieved on a base of solidarity which developed naturally; a community representative explains it like this: "We are all simple people here who the town council forgets, but Tdh has helped us to take control of our own destiny."

In Pakistan, Tdh carried out a very wide-ranging program (for nearly 57,000 beneficiaries) of renovation of the water systems in rural surroundings, which rounded off its emergency activities for the people stricken by the October 2005 earthquake in the mountains of Kashmir. Besides activities to promote hygiene and building more than 1,400 latrines, Tdh made access to spring water (gravity water supply system) for 50 villages possible again, and renovated water access and improved sanitation in some twenty schools.


The opinion of experts

"Access to clean water is the foundation on which the whole community builds."
Antoine Delepière, Tdh's specialist in water, sanitation and hygiene:

The lack of water leads to a whole series of serious issues, from fatal illnesses to missed opportunities for schooling and jobs.

Young children are more vulnerable than any other age group to the bad effects of lack of clean water, sanitation and hygiene. Illnesses such as diarrhea, pneumonia, neonatal disorders and the malnutrition which results from them, are among the main factors contributing to mortality in children under 5.

In addition, children – particularly girls – often have no access to schooling because they have to work carrying water home, or because they are put off by the lack of decent, separate sanitation in the schoolhouses.