World Water Crisis
TAKE ACTION: Combatting the World Water Crisis
Right now, over one billion people on the planet do not have access to clean, safe drinking water. That is about one in seven of us. The obvious health consequences of this extremely high number was made even more apparent by a recent United Nations report, which stated that lack of clean water and basic sanitation claims more lives than violence every year. This includes genocide.
An International Public Health Catastrophe
Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause an estimated 80% of diseases worldwide. Lack of clean drinking water also claims more lives every year than all forms of violence, including war and genocide. The United Nations predicts that one tenth of the global disease burden can be prevented simply by improving water supplies and sanitation practices.
90% of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are to children under five years old, as their bodies aren’t strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses. As is with another one our focus areas genocide, most of these deaths are preventable.
Here’s a few other health statistics:
- Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time.
- In Africa alone, the overall economic loss due to lack of safe water and sanitation is $28 billion, or about 5% of GDP.
- In Africa alone, people spend 40 billion hours every year just walking for water.
- Nearly 50% of hospital beds around the world are occupied by patients suffering from water-related diseases.
A New Security Crisis
However, lack of sanitary water does far more damage against communities than merely affecting the overall health of the people living in them, it is also quickly becoming a major international security crisis.
Lack of access to clean water in war-ravaged regions of the world such as Sudan, Central AfricanRepublic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, puts additional strains on aid workers and international peacekeeping troops, while simultaneously exacerbating already deeply complicated crises.
The acute poverty created from the lack of clean water that plagues these three countries, as well as many more, helps to keep the cycle of violence ongoing with seemingly no end.
Of course, lack of clean water was and is not the only factor in these conflict zones, but it is a major one that helps to keep the cycle of poverty and violence alive and well. All of this, however, can be ended and prevented by providing clean drinking water and basic sanitation practices.
At the community level, providing clean drinking water to defenseless people living in conflict zones such as the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo plays a vital role in preventing rape, abduction into human trafficking, and murder.
By constructing clean water wells directly in communities, the world can keep people from leaving the safer environment of their homes and having to walk for miles to get dirty, diseased water. An example of this is the Ugandan rebel movement Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which is notorious for abducting children as they walk for water. Often times, these children will be trained to fight and used by the rebels as sex slaves and porters.
From a security standpoint, clean drinking water can provide a lot of help in protecting at-risk populations and even preventing mass slaughter and human trafficking.