Singapore Championed World Toilet Day and It Actually Matters
World Toilet Day. Yes, that is an actual thing at the United Nations. And Singapore is the country that made it happen.
This is part of my retelling of “50 Years of Singapore and the United Nations” (Tommy Koh, Li Lin Chang, Joanna Koh, 2015, ISBN: 978-9814713030).
Chapter 8 is written by Karen Tan, who was Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. She had been a diplomat for nearly 30 years when she wrote this. And instead of picking a grand geopolitical topic, she chose to write about toilets. Which, honestly, might be the most important chapter in the whole book.
Why Toilets? Seriously?
I know. It sounds like a joke. A wealthy, ultra-modern country like Singapore pushing a toilet resolution at the UN. Some people actually laughed at the idea.
But here are the numbers. At the time of writing, 2.5 billion people did not have access to a proper toilet. One billion people were still going to the bathroom out in the open. That is not a small problem. That is roughly one in three humans on the planet without basic sanitation.
And it kills people. Open defecation is directly linked to diseases like diarrhea. About 760,000 children died from preventable causes related to poor sanitation. Every year. Let that number sit for a moment.
The economic damage? An estimated $260 billion lost annually. Not millions. Billions. Every single year.
For women and girls, the problem is even worse. Without proper toilets, girls drop out of school. Maternal death rates go up. And women face the constant risk of sexual violence when they have to go outside, often in the dark, with no privacy or protection.
So yeah. Toilets matter. A lot.
How Singapore Got This Done
On July 24, 2013, the UN General Assembly adopted a Singapore-sponsored resolution called “Sanitation for All.” It designated November 19 as World Toilet Day. The resolution passed by consensus, meaning nobody voted against it, and 121 other countries co-sponsored it.
The idea came from the World Toilet Organization, a Singapore-based NGO. Singapore’s delegation at the UN, led by Deputy Permanent Representative Mark Neo, ran several rounds of negotiations with member states from April to June 2013 to make it happen.
This was actually the first UN General Assembly resolution Singapore had sponsored in a long time. And the thinking behind it was smart. Singapore wanted to champion a real global development issue. Something that would show Singapore contributing positively to the international community. And it would highlight something Singapore is genuinely good at - water and wastewater management.
Karen Tan’s Path to This Moment
Karen Tan didn’t start her career thinking about toilets. She joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1985 and spent decades working all over the world. Paris, New York, Geneva, Laos, India. She had a front-row seat to some of Singapore’s biggest moments at the UN.
She worked on the Cambodian issue as a desk officer. She was involved when Singapore ran for a seat on the UN Security Council in 2001-2002. She helped set up the Global Governance Group (known as 3G) when she was posted in Geneva. And she saw the sanitation problem up close when she served as High Commissioner to India.
That last posting is important. Seeing the reality of life without proper sanitation in India changed things from abstract to personal. She writes that she can “attest to the importance of sanitation in creating economic development and in preserving human dignity.” That is not diplomatic boilerplate. That is someone who saw it with their own eyes.
A Giant Inflatable Toilet at the UN
The best part of this chapter is the way World Toilet Day was actually promoted. These are real things that happened at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
In 2013, for the first World Toilet Day event, someone dressed up in a toilet costume. They handed out bottles of NEWater (Singapore’s famous recycled water) and specially printed toilet paper rolls.
In 2014, they put up a 15-foot inflatable toilet outside the UN building.
The UN Deputy Secretary-General, Jan Eliasson, gave the keynote speech. Countries like Fiji, India, Hungary, and South Africa sent panelists. Samoa even created a special “Toilet” postage stamp.
There was a social media campaign under the hashtag #wecantwait that reached an estimated 375 million people. The Global Poverty Project put out a mock newspaper called “The Toilet Paper.” And at the Global Citizen Festival, they invited India’s newly-elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a new Sesame Street muppet named Raya to help spread the message.
You cannot make this stuff up. And honestly, that is what makes it work. When you are trying to get the world to pay attention to something people would rather not talk about, sometimes you need a giant inflatable toilet.
The Bigger Picture
This chapter is not just about toilets. It is about how Singapore approaches its role at the United Nations.
Karen Tan goes back to the beginning. When Singapore became independent on August 9, 1965, it joined the UN less than two weeks later. The country was tiny, had no natural resources, and was described by a Dutch economist as a “poor little market in a dark corner of Asia.” That same country now has a per capita GDP of $55,000.
Singapore’s first Foreign Minister, S. Rajaratnam, gave a speech at the UN in 1965 that Karen Tan quotes. He basically said Singapore supports the UN because it is in Singapore’s practical self-interest. Not vague idealism. Practical self-interest. That straightforward honesty is very Singapore.
Over 50 years, Singapore built a reputation for punching above its weight. They created the Forum of Small States (FOSS), which now includes over 100 countries. They formed the Global Governance Group to bridge the UN and the G20. They chaired major conferences on the Law of the Sea and the Earth Summit. All of this from a country with a very small diplomatic team.
And that is the context for World Toilet Day. Singapore does not have the military power or the economic weight to push through big resolutions on its own. But it can find issues where the whole world agrees something needs to be done and then be the country that actually does the work to make it happen.
Sanitation Became a Global Development Goal
The toilet initiative was not just symbolic. Singapore used World Toilet Day as a platform to push for water and sanitation to become an official Sustainable Development Goal at the UN. And they succeeded.
The WTD events brought together member states, UN agencies like UNICEF and UN-Women, NGOs, and private companies like Unilever. Singapore built real partnerships. And through panel discussions and advocacy, they helped make sure sanitation was prominently featured in the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
For a small country, that is serious influence. And it came from being willing to talk about something that most diplomats would find beneath them.
Why This Chapter Stands Out
Karen Tan could have written about any number of things from her 30-year diplomatic career. Security Council campaigns. Geopolitical crises. High-level negotiations.
She chose toilets.
And I think that says something important. The problems that get the most attention are not always the ones that affect the most people. Wars and natural disasters make headlines. But 2.5 billion people without a toilet? That barely registers.
Singapore saw an opportunity to do something genuinely useful. Not glamorous. Not headline-grabbing in the traditional sense. But real. The kind of thing that can actually change daily life for billions of people if enough countries take it seriously.
It is the same approach we saw in Chapter 1, where Singapore fixed the meeting room problem at the UN. Find a real problem. Build support. Get it done. No grandstanding required.
Sometimes the most important work at the United Nations involves a 15-foot inflatable toilet. And honestly, the world is better for it.
About the Author
Karen Tan served as Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Before that, she was High Commissioner to India from 2011 to 2013, with additional roles as Ambassador to Bhutan and Nepal. She also served as Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization and WIPO in Geneva, and as Ambassador to Laos. Earlier in her career she held posts in Paris and New York. She joined the Foreign Service in 1985 and holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of London and a Master of Science in European Studies from the London School of Economics.
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