Sanitation and Hygiene has risen up the international policy agenda in recent years. It has been included under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) within Target 10, which sets an aim to:

"Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation"

The International Year of Sanitation (IYS) was launched on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. It was declared in December 2006 by the United Nations General Assembly, in recognition of the poor progress has been made towards the Millennium Development Goals sanitation target, and aims to develop awareness and action to meet the MDG sanitation target.

ODI's Water Policy Programme is researching on many of the issues behind the International Year of Sanitation. This page collates some of the key resources from ODI on sanitation.