Safe sanitation is a human right and one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 6.2). Nevertheless, around 3.5 billion people globally remain without access to safely managed sanitary facilities. About 539 million students do not have basic sanitation in their schools and circa 780 million people depend on healthcare facilities without any sanitation. Financial resources and knowledge that are required to renovate, build, operate, and maintain sanitary facilities are often missing. In addition, the importance of safe hygiene practices for human health and well-being is commonly overlooked. A lack of access to safe sanitation and hygiene particularly affects disadvantaged and vulnerable groups like women, children, refugees, internally displaced people, persons with disabilities, or people living in poverty.

In this context, in 2016, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) commissioned Sanitation for Millions to improve access to safe sanitation and hygiene with a focus on disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. More than two million people have already benefitted directly from the project’s measures. 

With the BMZ as the lead donor, Sanitation for Millions has received additional funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Water Unite, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary, the Inter-American Development Bank, and share GmbH. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH executes the global programme in close cooperation with local partners in Colombia, Jordan, Pakistan, and Uganda. Until June 2023, Sanitation for Millions was also active in the framework of the GEF CReW+ project to improve integrated water and wastewater management in eleven countries of the Wider Caribbean Region.