Ensuring public accountability through community action 2005 Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi 1 SANITATION AND WASTE MANAGEMENT: A PERSPECTIVE OF GENDER AND DIPLOMACY Medha Bisht 1 INTRODUCTION The notion of diplomatic studies or the study of diplomacy in context to contemporary world affairs has stimulated an academic response to the emerging trends in contemporary diplomacy. This is because International Relations as a discipline has seen a paradigmatic shift of focus in nature of global debate on security and development, which started since the Rio Conference on Environment and Development (1992). Not only has it witnessed a range of diverse actors participating at the international level, but has also underlined the urgency of debating the interdependence of debating development and security concerns, which identify more with the daily lives of common men and women. 2 As a result international negotiations of late do address development concerns, which has resulted, in the reshaping the contours of diplomacy from that of a state centric one, to that of a development one. A scholar in International Relations, Walter Laquer, has said ` There will always be room for diplomacy, but in its present form, it is largely an 18 th century relic that badly needs rethinking and refashioning. I believe these words of Laquer need to be considered, if one intends to study the empirical impact of contemporary negotiations through the applied system analysis. It is in this context that the paper `Gender, Sanitation and Waste Management has been explored. The paper is divided into three sections: Section 1 will highlight the conceptual understanding of sanitation and waste management at the international level. A gender prism will be applied to the whole analysis. Section 2 will critically examine the policy relevance of such agreements at the national level. 1 Research Associate Institute of Social Studies Trust 2 Some of the emerging issues include: environment, health, refugee crises, rights of minorities etc. as against the traditional focus in international relations which generally concentrated on security issues of war and peace.