Every year, we celebrate World Water Day on 22nd March. This special UN day is all about focussing our attention on the importance of water. The adult human body is made up of up to 60% water.
We all need water to live, but in an unequal world, 844 million people are denied access to clean water to drink, cook with and wash in. A shocking 2.3 billion people are living without adequate sanitation facilities.
Even in 2018, a lack of clean water and hygiene facilities has a hugely detrimental impact on health, education and livelihoods for billions of people around the world.
Restricted or no access to safe water and sanitation facilities is particularly detrimental for young children. Every 60 seconds, a newborn dies from infections caused by a lack of safe water. Diarrhoea from unsanitary conditions and dirty water kills a child under the age of 5 every 2 minutes.
Around 31% of schools worldwide don’t have clean water. Up to 443 million school days are lost every year due to illnesses related to contaminated water. For women and girls, the outlook can be bleak. 226 million girls spend an average of 6 hours every day searching for water. When they find it, there’s no guarantee that it will be fit for human consumption.
For 27 years, we have worked to provide communities around the world with the safe water and adequate sanitation facilities that are basic human rights. On World Water Day, we’d like to take the opportunity to highlight some of our amazing water and hygiene projects over the last few years.
Since the Rohingya crisis began in August 2017, Human Appeal has provided vital WASH facilities to 3,885 Rohingya people in Myanmar.
Nearly 1 million Rohingya people are currently sheltering in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh after fleeing ethnic cleansing. In the border town of Cox’s Bazar, we provided WASH facilities to more than 21,350 people.
With the help of our local partners, we have also constructed 20 shallow water wells, 4 deep water wells, 1 community toilet for women and 75 latrines in the Bangladesh refugee camps. Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have also been provided with training sessions on the importance of handwashing, hygiene kits and bathing corners.
The humanitarian situation in Iraq is still precarious, and after the devastating Battle of Mosul, thousands of families are struggling to meet their basic needs.
In the most heavily destroyed neighbourhoods in Mosul, the Human Appeal team in Iraq has worked tirelessly to provide clean water for 23,000 people.
With the help of our donors, we were able to rehabilitate 30 schools in east Mosul and provide clean water to hundreds of school children in 2017. We also installed 18 water tanks to supply safe water to more than 10,000 internally displaced people in the Al-Amal neighbourhood.
After 7 years of brutal conflict, Syria’s infrastructure has been severely damaged and 6.1 million people displaced from their homes.
In the camps for internally displaced people in Syria’s Idlib, our teams helped 6,750 residents to access clean water, sanitation and hygiene facilities in 2017.
The Gaza Strip in Palestine is facing a severe water crisis, caused in part by the ongoing Israeli blockade. UN sources believe that by 2020, the entire region could become uninhabitable due to the contamination of all groundwater by salt.
In 2015, we provided 64 Palestinian schools with clean water, benefiting thousands of school children. Our 2016 projects targeted health centres and hospitals and helped more than 100,000 people to access safe water.
After two years without rainfall, the 2017 drought in Somalia left 6 million people – half the country’s population – in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
Last year, our hardworking teams in Somalia provided improved access to clean water and sanitation facilities in the Luuq and Dolow districts of Somalia. In the Gedo and Banadir regions, we installed WASH facilities and dug deep water wells, benefiting more than 33,000 people.
Areas of Pakistan are extremely prone to drought and lack basic water infrastructure. Between 2014 and 2017, Human Appeal helped more than 70,000 people to access water and sanitation facilities. We installed 30 water wells and 7 solar powered pumps to provide more than 39,000 people with clean drinking water in the district of Tharparkur.
In Faisalabad, we built 6 water filtration plants to bring safe water to thousands of people who were previously forced to use contaminated water for drinking, washing and cooking. We also installed sanitation facilities and clean water fountains in 20 public schools.
Prophet Muhammad PBUH said: “The best charity is giving water to drink” and he was the most generous in giving charity.
By donating to one of our water projects, you can completely transform lives around the world. Access to safe water and hygiene facilities protects families from water borne diseases, promotes health and allows people to live with dignity. It stops women and girls from walking hours each day to collect water, freeing them to pursue education or employment and reducing gender inequality.
You can give a vulnerable family the precious gift of clean water today.
