water means survival


WHEN YOUR WELL RUNS DRY


Imagine coming home to grab a drink of water and take a shower after having spent an entire day outside in the hot summer sun, only to find that the water system in your town has broken down. You become overwhelmed as you start listing the things you need to do before tomorrow—cook dinner, wash dishes, laundry, shower. You start to feel thirsty, but then your neighbour comes over to tell you that you can collect water in the next town over. You grab a bucket but quickly realize that one trip will not be enough.


When you arrive, you discover that the water


looks polluted and you worry


about whether it’s safe to drink. It’s okay, you tell yourself, I can do it for one day.


It rarely occurs to us how much water we actually use in a day, until it becomes a limited resource. For many refugees, water is an incredibly limited resource, and a daily struggle to access.


Through the WASH program supplies for (Life-


Saving Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene), UNHCR improves accessibility to quality water


refugees. Delivering water areas,


sanitation


millions of to remote


building wells, boreholes and facilities,


and installing


latrines and septic tanks are all ways that UNHCR provides access to clean water, promotes


sanitation programs,


and helps improve the health, safety and daily living standard of millions of refugees. «


12 / UNHCR


©UNHCR/Will Swanson Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya


©UNHCR/Assadullah Nasrullah Dadaab, Kenya


©UNHCR/Nodira Akbaralieva Tashtak Village, Krygystan


When the Tashtak village found that they had no water, villagers were forced to travel to neighbouring villages to collect it. Children are often the ones who are tasked with collecting water and, as a result, frequently have their education interrupted. By building appropriate infrastructure, the villagers now have easy access to water and children are able to attend school.


Isaq Abdi is a 43-year-old refugee from Somalia and member of a spraying team in Ifo 2 camp of Dadaab. Disinfection teams go from house to house in the camps spraying latrines and houses. Isaq says, “Spraying is going on well, so far I have sprayed 200 latrines and 200 houses, people appreciate our work. I like what I do because I am helping my community, preventing diseases and I also get an allowance.”


Thapisa Nyakuel was 18 when she left her home of Panyinjar in South Sudan. Alone, she travelled to Kenya in February 2015 and is now at the Kakuma Refugee Camp. For Thapisa, accessible water can come with a dangerous cost. Long distances to water points can put young girls and women at risk of sexual violence. By improving safe access to water, UNHCR helps to keep women safe.


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