The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 aims to ‘ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’ and includes targets for universal access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). The World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund (WHO/UNICEF) Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene produces internationally comparable estimates of progress on WASH and is responsible for global monitoring of the SDG targets related to WASH.

This report presents updated national, regional and global estimates for WASH in households for the period 2000 to 2022, and has a special focus on gender and WASH. The importance of progress on drinking water, sanitation and hygiene for achieving SDG 5 which aims to ‘realize gender equality and empower all women and girls’ is widely recognized. Likewise, gender inequalities impede realization of the SDG 6 targets on WASH.

1 in 4 people around the world lack safely managed drinking water
Between 2000 and 2022, 2.1 billion people gained access to safely managed drinking water and the number of people lacking at least basic drinking water services decreased from 1.2 billion to 703 million. Two thirds (1.4 billion) of those gaining safely managed services lived in urban areas as compared to the 704 million rural population.