Achieving the Human Right to Sanitation? Container based sanitation and intersectional vulnerabilities in a South African informal settlement

Container based sanitation (CBS) is marketed as an innovative ‘improved’ service with potential to provide ‘safely managed’ sanitation for people living in low resource settings. Yet little research has investigated this claim regarding the most marginalised individuals within these populations, many of whom experience myriad intersectional vulnerabilities. This paper examines and compares whether household CBS (in the form of portable flush toilets, PFTs) and shared sanitation users in a South African informal settlement are able to realise their Human Right to Sanitation (HRtS). Thirteen residents of BM Section, Cape Town, were purposively selected to understand how sanitation service types, age, gender, (dis)ability, income and personal shocks shape experiences. Data was collected using Photovoice and analysed using Winkler’s interpretation of the normative contents of the HRtS and Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality. In this context, the adoption of household CBS and its ability to function as a private, dignified, safe (hygienic and physical) form of sanitation depends on users’ capacity to adapt it to overcome the technology’s limitations. Users with limited or no capacity to adapt their PFTs face limitations in accessing sanitation safely, privately and with dignity. This in turn, worsens disparities in sanitation outcomes among vulnerable PFT users, underscoring that technical provision alone is insufficient to realise the HRtS. Shared sanitation remains functionally limited or unsafe for many. When the HRtS and intersectionality are considered, household CBS may have the potential to be ‘safely managed’ in theory, but in reality, barely meets the needs of the most vulnerable users.