Street vendors and the human rights to water and sanitation: a scoping review

ABSTRACT

Water and sanitation are fundamental rights that must be secured in the workplace to promote workers’ health, productivity, and wellbeing. However, informal street workers often do not have these services guaranteed although they represent an important economic sector. While these services have been widely studied from a household perspective, few studies have focused on water and sanitation in public spaces. The aim of this research is to review studies reported in the literature that investigate access to water and sanitation facilities by street vendors. A systematic literature review was conducted, and three databases were utilised. A total of 42 studies were included. The presence of water and sanitation facilities was not the main approach in the literature - mainly focused on food hygiene. In the studies that identified water services, availability was the main component. Lack of facilities or water storage in the stalls, which could lead to quality and safety problems, hence health issues, were identified. Regarding toilets, few identified availability and some reported privacy and dignity issues. This systematic review confirms the importance of WASH facilities for street vendors and provides key insights to inform future research and policy for people who work on the streets.

KEYWORDS:

• Hygiene
• informality
• hawkers
• street workers
• vendors

Acknowledgements

The first author acknowledges the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) for funding her PhD scholarship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) through a PhD scholarship for the first author.