Toilets are not to be taken for granted
Crouching silhouettes seeking privacy served as a reminder in Bern on Wednesday that many people around the world don't have proper toilet facilities.
An exhibition entitled “Sanitation is Dignity” showed people the grim reality of life without proper sanitation, as part of the Swiss participation in World Toilet Day.
More than one third of the world’s population lives without toilets and every year two million people fall victim to diarrhoeal diseases caused by the lack of sanitation.
The awareness day was organised as part of the International Year of Sanitation campaign. The Bern exhibition has already been shown in New York, Berlin and Vienna.
The Swiss campaign appealed to the population to support Swiss non-governmental organisations working in the field of water, sanitation and hygiene.
The charity Swiss Association for International Cooperation, for its part, deposited hundreds of piles of artificial faeces in Bern and Lausanne city centres to highlight the problem.
Earlier this week, the Swiss Urimat company won an environment award in Dubai for its urinal that functions without water.
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