It stands for Joint Monitoring Progarmme Report published by WHO and UNICEF.

The joint WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme is affiliated to UN-Water and was established in 1990. It builds on earlier monitoring activities carried out by WHO since the 1960s.

JMP is the only drinking water and sanitation monitoring mechanism that provides information allowing comparison between countries and over time.

For the Sustainable Development Goals, the JMP uses its 25 years of experience, and focuses on drinking water, sanitation and hygiene ie., SDG goal 6.

3 Definations of ODF status :

• ODF: An area can be notified or declared as ODF if at any point of the day, not even a single person is found defecating in the open.
• ODF+: This status is given if at any point of the day, not a single person is found defecating and/or urinating in the open, and all community and public toilets are functional and well maintained.
• ODF++: This status is given if the area is already ODF+ and the faecal sludge/septage and sewage are safely managed and treated, with no discharging or dumping of untreated faecal sludge and sewage into the open drains, water bodies etc.,

The report reveals that 17% of the rural population in India still practices open defecation.

Key highlights of Report:

1. One key finding of the gender review is that national data on WASH services are typically collected at household level rather than individual level and therefore cannot be disaggregated by sex or gender. These indicators can be considered gender-blind because they treat all members of the household the same and ignore differences between women and men.
2. Safely managed sanitation services is expressed as the proportion of the population having a certain level of service, while safely treated wastewater reflects the proportion of volumetric flows (for example, in cubic metres per year) safely treated.  At current rates of progress, the world will only reach 77% coverage by 2030, leaving 2 billion people without safely managed services
3. Hand hygiene is critical to reducing transmission of infectious diseases and is foundational to a resilient health system. The JMP 2023 progress update highlights inequalities in service levels between and within countries. Access to handwashing facilities is also important for maintaining personal hygiene, and women and girls, and other persons who menstruate, have specific additional hygiene needs related to menstrual health. If current rates of progess continue, the world will reach 85% coverage by 2030, leaving around 1.4 billion people without basic hygiene services. Between 2017 and 2023, 30 countries gained estimates for basic hygiene, but 16 countries lost estimates due to ageing data. The establishment of baseline estimates for India in 2019, and for China in 2023, had large impacts on regional as well as global estimates.

The JMP 2023 progress update documents inequalities in service levels between and within countries, but it is widely recognized that the impact of inadequate sanitation is not evenly distributed across the population.