Bangladesh is a hub of sanitation experimentation and model-building. It is internationally
recognised as the place where Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) first succeeded in
eliminating open defecation (OD) from whole villages. This and other achievements rest on a
broad foundation. After briefly reviewing the history of sanitation promotion in rural
Bangladesh, this paper summarises the most urgent issues and challenges related to sustaining
the country’s achievements in 2015. It concludes with some learning points of possible interest
to other countries seeking to promote universal sanitation coverage.
Intensive sanitation promotion in Bangladesh has a long and complicated history dating back to
the 1960s. There have been at least two major sanitation campaigns. A UNICEF-led ‘Social
Mobilisation for Sanitation’ campaign in the 1980s was most active in Banaripara Subdistrict in
the southern district of Barisal. There was much burning-down of leafy enclosures surrounding
outdoor defecation places and forcible removal of ‘hanging latrines’ extending out over water
bodies or fields. Numerous approaches have been tested and replicated. CARE’s SAFE/SAFER
program, for example, continued for ten years in the southeast from 1991 to 2001, producing
numerous public education materials for different social groups and testing a no-subsidy
approach. The most extensive campaigns and programmes have focused on changing householdlevel
practices in rural areas.2 A national-scale, government-led Sanitation Campaign went on
from 2003 to 2006.