An inspired Facebook update or a 140-character tweet could play a key role in shaping global development plans.

Over the next few weeks, policymakers are seeking input from the public via social media channels as they craft a sustainable development goal to address global water-management concerns and ensure water is available in the future for food and industrial production, for drinking and for sanitation.

Morris Marah is project manager at Africa Gathering, a network of people focused on encouraging sustainable development using technology and social networking.

The Sanitation hackathon is a global project where developers are working on solutions to challenges facing the sanitation sector using mobile technology over a 48-hour period. Globally, 2.5 billion people do not have adequate sanitation facilities.

Nick Dickinson from International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) discusses the Quick Financial Sustainability Check project under construction by Team Fresh Sh!t at the Sanitation Hackathon in London.

The hackathon is a global project where developers are working on solutions to challenges facing the sanitation sector using mobile technology. Globally, 2.5 billion people do not have adequate sanitation facilities.

Applying mobile technology to help provide proper sanitation to 2.5 billion people who lack it makes sense given that globally 5 billion people are subscribed to mobile phone services, many of them in the developing world, according to the organisers of a two-day global brainstorming event.

The Sanitation Hackathon, which is taking place this weekend, has attracted software developers, designers, entrepreneurs and students to sites in at least 30 cities around the world.

Media reports predicting that London would be overrun by women trafficked to Britain to service spectators with sex during the Olympics reinforced negative stereotypes and diminished the complexity of trafficking, an expert has said.

Georgina Perry, who manages Open Doors, a service for sex workers in London run by Britain’s National Health Service, said fears the Olympic Games would create a surge in sex trafficking were unfounded. The hype around this issue also drove vulnerable sex workers from health care services out of fear they would be treated as criminals, putting them at risk, she added.

At least 24 million people living in 39,000 communities in 50 countries have eliminated open defecation over the past five years, signalling that progress is being made in the fight to help 1.1 billion people who do not use proper facilities, the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF) reported on Monday.

Under its Community Approaches to Total Sanitation (CATS) programme, UNICEF aims to eliminate open defecation by encouraging social and behavioural change among villagers leading to the construction of latrines.

Helen Pankhurst, a member of charity WaterAid’s board of trustees, spoke at a World Toilet Day event at London’s Anthologist restaurant.

The “1 in 3 women event” marked the day by drawing attention to the fact that there are 1.25 billion women in the world who have nowhere safe to go to the toilet.

Peter Knoope, director of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague, was part of a panel discussion on race politics, Islamophobia and extremisms of the far right and left at “Reporting on International Security and Terrorism” in Istanbul.

Discussions are hosted by international security experts and attended by 25 journalists from around the world.

Rolf Mowatt-Larsson, currently a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, served more than three years as director of intelligence and counter-intelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy and for 23 years as a Central Intelligence Agency officer in various posts.

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He delivered a presentation about preventing nuclear terrorism at the three-day “Reporting on International Security and Terrorism” seminar in Istanbul hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.