Sanitation has increasingly become a major development concern following the evolution of human civilizations into more complex and larger societies. Today, Africa is rapidly urbanising and most parts are plagued with poor access to basic services and related human rights violations. Sub-Saharan Africa, with a population of around 1 billion, has the highest proportion of people living without access to clean water and sanitation globally. The sustainability of interventions geared towards addressing the sanitation crisis will depend on the extent to which the gap in access is reduced for poor and vulnerable persons especially.
This lecture illustrates some of the broad concerns of inclusive access to sanitation services, with examples drawn from Nigeria. It highlights salient contradictions and incoherence in the socio-legal construction of sanitation among various stakeholders, and in the regulatory approaches and governance instruments, to an extent that reinforces power asymmetries, dissuades the enforcement of sanitation regulation and compliance, and inhibits inclusive access.
Dr Pedi Obani of the United Nations University, Accra.
Discussants: Mulugeta Sisay and Ben Pontin from Environmental Justice Research Unit (EJRU)
4-6pm, Thursday 10th October 2019
Room 2.30A School of Law and Politics, Museum Avenue, Cardiff
