“Bangladesh: Climate crisis magnifies discrimination against “invisible” sanitation workers”, 16 October 2025
Bangladesh authorities must urgently address their failure to uphold the rights of sanitation workers, who face economic marginalization and entrenched gender- and caste-based discrimination, vulnerabilities that are only deepening amid a global climate crisis driven largely by fossil fuel combustion, Amnesty International said in a new report.
‘Left Behind in the Storm: Dalit Women Sanitation Workers and the Fight for Water and Dignity’, documents the huge barriers that Dalit women sanitation workers in Khulna and Satkhira districts on the south-western coastal belt in Bangladesh face to access safe drinking water, adequate sanitation and their vulnerability and exclusion in climate change relief programmes. It also explores how these workers are largely invisible in government policies on climate change, water and sanitation due to their caste, gender and occupation, despite being among the most affected by these policies.
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The report is based on interviews with 20 female and two male sanitation workers from Dalit communities in Khulna and Satkhira, located in low-lying, flood-prone areas that are highly exposed to the climate change related impacts of rising sea levels, cyclones, droughts, and flooding. Further, officials from Disaster Management Department and Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) and members of WASH and Disaster local managements committees from these two districts were also interviewed.
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Sanitation workers in Khulna and Satkhira reported having no household water connections for drinking, washing, cooking and cleaning. Instead, many are forced to either purchase and carry water from distant treatment centres, or to collect rainwater or use public wells or pond water – with unsafe water causing a range of health problems. The cost of buying safe drinking water was another barrier, especially for families earning as little as 3,000 to 8,000 taka (US$ 25-65) a month.
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The report documents how extreme weather events, made more frequent and severe by climate change, further magnify existing inequalities, trapping sanitation workers in coastal regions in a cycle of vulnerability. With 18 cyclones over 17 years, entire settlements have been caught in cycles of rebuilding they can ill afford. A basic latrine costing up to 3,000 taka (US$25) is a stretch for many families, let alone upgrading it to make it flood resilient.
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