WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP) - Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000 - 2020

The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene report –  Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000 - 2020 – presents estimates on household access to safely managed drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services over the past five years, and assesses progress toward achieving the sixth sustainable development goal (SDG) to ‘Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030’. For the first time, the report also presents emerging national data on menstrual health.

In 2020, around 1 in 4 people lacked safely managed drinking water in their homes and nearly half the world’s population lacked safely managed sanitation. COVID-19 has highlighted the urgent need to ensure everyone can access good hand hygiene. At the onset of the pandemic, 3 in 10 people worldwide could not wash their hands with soap and water within their homes.

The report makes clear that, if current trends persist, billions of children and families will be left without critical, life-saving WASH services, stating that by 2030:

• Only 81 per cent of the world’s population will have access to safe drinking water at home, leaving 1.6 billion without;
• Only 67 per cent will have safe sanitation services, leaving 2.8 billion without;
• And only 78 per cent will have basic handwashing facilities, leaving 1.9 billion without.

The report also notes vast inequalities with vulnerable children and families suffering the most. To achieve universal access to safely managed drinking water by 2030, the current rate of progress in the Least Developed Countries would need to increase ten-fold. In fragile contexts, where people were twice as likely to lack safe drinking water, it would need to accelerate by a factor of 23.

The JMP website, www.washdata.org, allows visitors to interactively access the full dataset, and download individual country files which include all of the data used to produce the estimates.

• Download the report Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000 - 2020.