Hansard

The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-14471, in the name of Iain Gray, on world toilet day 2015—we can’t wait. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament welcomes World Toilet Day 2015, which aims to raise awareness of the need for proper sanitation and toilets and their importance to health, dignity, security and social and economic development across the world; notes with deep dismay reports that 2.5 billion people do not have access to proper sanitation or toilets, that in 45 countries fewer than half the population have access to adequate sanitation and that 2,000 children die each day from diarrhoea caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation; notes that Equality, Dignity and the Link Between Gender-Based Violence and Sanitation is this year’s theme for World Toilet Day, aiming to highlight the threat of sexual violence that women and girls face due to loss of privacy and the inadequacy of toilet facilities to manage menstrual hygiene, as well as inequalities in usability for disabled and older people; congratulates Grace Warnock, a 10-year-old Prestonpans Primary School pupil, on her Grace’s Sign campaign to secure better door signs for accessible toilets in Scotland to raise awareness that they are not only for wheelchair users; welcomes what it considers the significant progress that Grace has already made with her campaign, including coming up with her own new design for door signs to show that they are also for people who are not visibly disabled and working with Independent Living in Scotland and Scottish Disability Equality Forum to engage with local authorities on improving the signage at their accessible toilets, and notes the call for action and urgency expressed in World Toilet Day’s tag line, We Can’t Wait, and the call for action now to meet the goal agreed at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September to “achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations” by 2030.