News Desk
New York : Reported attacks that damaged or destroyed water and sanitation systems in conflict tripled between 2021 and 2025, raising children’s risk of disease outbreaks, malnutrition and violence, according to UNICEF’s Water Under Fire Volume 4. The report covers 23 countries and territories from January 2021 to June 2026 and finds attacks are becoming more frequent, more varied and more geographically widespread.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said repairs cannot substitute for the protection of these facilities required under international humanitarian law.
The report describes seven types of attack, from strikes on treatment plants, pipelines and wells to water contamination and restrictions on spare parts and chemicals. By March 2024, only one of Khartoum State’s 13 water treatment plants still worked, while in Burkina Faso over 145 water points were destroyed, cutting off about 830,000 people. In Gaza, more than 130,000 metres of sewage pipeline have been damaged. Attacks on energy infrastructure can also cut water, as in Ukraine and Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.
Without clean water, health facilities cannot sterilise equipment or deliver babies safely, and children face repeated diarrhea and malnutrition. A hepatitis E outbreak in eastern Chad refugee camps was linked to poor water and sanitation. Children have been killed or injured queuing for water, and women and girls face greater risk of sexual violence on longer journeys. Fourteen staff of Lebanon’s Water Establishments were killed in 2024.
Aid teams are adapting, with about 65 percent of UNICEF-supported water systems in Afghanistan now solar-powered. But only 26 percent of the 2026 funding needed for WASH assistance has been received, while 137.9 million people need help.
UNICEF urged parties to conflict and donors to treat WASH systems as indispensable to civilian survival, create a mechanism to collect data on attacks, protect users and workers, ensure unimpeded humanitarian access, and invest in conflict-resilient, locally led services.
