In a bid to improve the health and well-being of millions of people worldwide, the United Nations today launched a major push to accelerate progress towards the goal of halving, by 2015, the proportion of the population without access to basic sanitation.
Access to sanitation has been recognized by the UN as a human right, a basic service required to live a normal life. And yet, some 2.6 billion people – or half the population in the developing world – still lack access to improved sanitation.
The drive launched today, “Sustainable sanitation: The Five-Year-Drive to 2015,” was established by the General Assembly in a resolution adopted last December that called on Member States to redouble efforts to close the sanitation gap, one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that world leaders have pledged to achieve by 2015. (...)

The article:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38783&Cr=sanitation&Cr1=

More about:
http://www.unsgab.org/index.htm

Basic information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation