Human Rights Day 2025: Dignity Starts with a Toilet
Today, December 10, the world celebrates Human Rights Day, marking the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Article 1 is only seven words long, yet it carries the weight of our shared humanity:
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
Dignity. That single word is one of the reasons why we, at SOIL, do the work that we do every day; because almost nothing strips a person's dignity faster than having nowhere safe and private to use the toilet.
This year’s Human Rights Day theme is simple and powerful: Our Everyday Essentials.
Clean water. Food. Shelter. Safety. Education.
At SOIL, we insist on adding one more essential that is too often forgotten: a safe, private, dignified place to use the toilet.
We invite you to think about your own morning routine before reading this. You woke up and probably headed to the bathroom without a second thought, you did your business, washed your hands, and started your day. This simple access to a toilet is so ordinary that it barely lingers in our memory, yet it is the quiet foundation that makes every other “everyday essential” possible.
Now imagine waking up and knowing you have no toilet. Imagine telling your child she has to wait until sunrise to use a public facility because it’s better to risk assault in the daylight than to go outside during the night. Or losing another week of work because diarrhea has left you too weak to stand.
That is daily life for nearly 70 % of Haitians, and for 3.5 billion people worldwide.
Sanitation is not charity.
It is not optional infrastructure.
For nearly twenty years SOIL has been proving that even in the most densely packed neighborhoods of Cap-Haïtien, in communities without sewers or abundant water, safe, dignified sanitation is possible.
On this Human Rights Day we celebrate that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Dignity is built, one everyday essential at a time, and the list of “everyday essentials” is not complete until a safe toilet is accessible for every single person on the planet.