The overall objective of the International Year of Sanitation (IYS) is to accelerate progress towards providing adequate basic sanitation for the 2.6 billion people worldwide who lack access to this fundamental human right.
Access to sanitation is vital to ensuring health, dignity and sustainable social and economic development for the world’s poorest citizens. The United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for sanitation is 'to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the world’s population without sustainable access to basic sanitation.' The target is wildly off track, and at current rates of progress will not be met.

WaterAid hopes that the UN’s International Year of Sanitation will help position the crisis in sanitation more prominently on the global agenda by raising the issue’s profile with politicians, civil society, the media and the general public. "Sanitation is crucial to the achievement of all the Millennium Development Goals. If UN member nations are serious about meeting the goals and tackling poverty then action must be taken to reverse the global crisis in sanitation. Almost half of the world’s population lacks access to even basic sanitation. The cost in human terms is huge, with 1.8 million children dying each year before their fifth birthday from diarrhoea. WaterAid welcomes the UN’s renewed commitment. Throughout the International Year of Sanitation we will be calling on governments to mobilise the necessary extraordinary effort to overcome this crisis." Sarah Dobsevage, Program Development Officer, WaterAid America.

WaterAid hopes that the International Year of Sanitation will raise awareness and promote decisive action by key players like the leaders of the world’s G8 group of industrialised nations. WaterAid will be campaigning throughout the year under the banner of End Water Poverty.