The United Nations launches the International Year of Sanitation on Wednesday. What, I hear you ask - a whole year talking about...toilets?!?

In Europe, we take for granted a toilet on the premises, at home and at work. In the developing world, however, almost one in two people doesn't have one. Imagine having to go to your local park, or the nearest unoccupied land, to defecate.

Here it's dog waste we put in plastic bags, but in densely-populated cities in Africa, they're used for human faeces. They are the famous flying toilets - that's "flying" as in thrown away, casually disposed of, by the user.

The International Year of Sanitation is designed to put a spotlight on poor hygiene conditions in many developing countries. It will emphasise the scant progress towards the sanitation target set by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and advocate for the benefits that stem from better sanitation and hygiene.

For me, visiting Democratic Republic of Congo last year was an unforgettable experience. The rates of access to sanitation in DRC are estimated to be 8 percent and 10 percent in urban and rural areas respectively. This means that only one in 10 Congolese has access to a toilet (of the terrestrial, non-flying kind, that is). Imagine what conditions are like in the country's slums.

As for solid-waste disposal, during the research we carried out with our partners, Tearfund and the Programme de Promotion des Soins de Santé Primaires en Zones de Santé Rurales (PPSSP), we discovered that in the capital Kinshasa, a city with a population of 6-7 million people, the public sanitation authority possesses just one functioning rubbish lorry.

TALKING ABOUT THE S-WORD

How is it that access to a basic service, for a basic need, is so lacking?

Part of the story is, of course, stigma: defecation is not the stuff of everyday conversation. One of the aims of the International Year of Sanitation is to help remove the awkwardness around sanitation, so its importance can be more easily and publicly discussed.

Creative work by activists in South Asia has shown how communities can mobilise themselves to stop "open defecation" and that has included overcoming the taboo of talking about the "S-H-one-T" word (though I hesitate to write it).

Nor has sanitation been a common subject for political speeches - few ministers cut ribbons at latrine blocks, or check the sanitation facilities at the opening of a new school. But they should because, absurdly, schools are still being built without toilet and washing facilities.

As the United Nations commented in 2005, "Without strong champions to raise public awareness and generate concern, the sanitation crisis has not been met with anything resembling the kind of response necessary to make substantial and sustainable gains."

In many countries, overcoming political indifference to sanitation and hygiene is still a challenge. Yet, the degree of risk associated with prioritising the issue is less than many politicians think.

Instead of large capital outlays on infrastructure, public investment in sanitation and hygiene can be targeted towards boosting human resources. And once politicians put their apprehensions aside, they will see they're missing a trick - strengthening their constituencies.

Studies on sanitation have shown that low levels of expressed interest are often misleading. Where women in particular have an opportunity to voice their views, they frequently value improved sanitation facilities and better hygiene in and around the household. Motivations of privacy and individual dignity are important - often more so than public health.

TOILETS HELP REDUCE POVERTY

Failure to invest in improving hygiene conditions is undermining efforts to reduce poverty and promote economic growth. As I expressed in a July 2007 sanitation "policy background paper" for Britain's Department of International Development, inaction on sanitation is simply not a viable option.

On the other hand, improving it can contribute to development in a wide range of areas: not only water and the environment, but also health, education, housing, and urban and rural development. Better sanitation is also a means for respecting personal dignity and safety. Despite this, it frequently loses out to these other sectors when policy and budget priorities are being set.

Sanitation commonly falls within the remit of water institutions, but the dynamics of sanitation and hygiene are, in many respects, different from water supply. The way they are systematically linked with water in policy-making is often unhelpful.

Rather, the case for more investment in sanitation and hygiene needs to be taken beyond water institutions to policy-makers. In education, school curricula need to incorporate hygiene education, and in health, more resources must be allocated to district health officers for preventative work - for example, to avoid outbreaks of cholera.

At the same time, ministers of finance need to be persuaded of the benefits of investment in sanitation and hygiene, by emphasising the multiple impacts it can have on the MDGs impacts.

The RiPPLE Programme in Ethiopia - a consortium of Ethiopian and international partners - is looking into an example where sanitation has been politically championed. Since 2003, efforts to tackle the lack of sanitation and hygiene facilities and practice in rural communities in the Southern Nations region of Ethiopia have attracted considerable attention, and the initial findings point to some interesting lessons.

In the International Year of Sanitation, development practitioners around the world can expect to witness a renewed and more determined effort to make the case that providing better sanitation and hygiene facilities for poor households is a development priority - especially for the benefit of all those who are still without the basic means to carry out a basic daily function.

We all do it - even if we are coy at talking about it. Or spelling it out in writing.

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