World Vision alerts about the impact of water scarcity on women and girls worldwide, as both groups spend nearly 250 million hours collecting water every day. This task takes away time and energy from other activities, preventing them from being with their families, going to school, or engaging in income-generating activities to improve their lives.
On World Water Day, celebrated every March 22nd, the NGO indicates that women and girls bear the brunt of the global water crisis as they are often responsible for carrying water to their homes in the most vulnerable contexts. This water, in many cases, is not even potable and carries diseases that affect the most vulnerable people, the organization points out.
As an example, it mentions the cases of sisters Mahana, nine years old, and Firdaoussou, twelve years old, who daily collect water from a well about a kilometer away from their home in southwest Niger. The older sister, Firdaoussou, makes this trip 12 times a day, meaning she does not attend school and spends her time helping with household chores.
«I don’t play,» says Firdaoussou, whose name means sky or paradise. «I only help my mother,» adds the young girl, whose birth order has determined her fate in life. Women and girls worldwide, like Firdaoussou, walk an average of 6 kilometers a day to carry 20 kilos of water.
Thus, the lack of water and sanitation also affects women and girls in other ways, such as in menstrual health and education. Girls who attend school until adolescence are more likely to drop out when they start menstruating unless their school has access to clean water, latrines, sanitary supplies, and support for hygiene habits.
Therefore, World Vision argues that helping young women manage their menstrual health not only involves providing adequate facilities but also addressing social norms.
On the other hand, it emphasizes that the lack of clean water, sanitation facilities, and proper hygiene contribute to high rates of disease and mortality among mothers and newborns in developing countries. In the areas where World Vision works, half of health centers lack clean water, and 5 out of 6 do not even have basic handwashing facilities.
«Unfortunately, year after year we celebrate this commemoration with the same message: clean water is essential for life, and yet, nearly 1,000 children die every day from diarrheal diseases associated with contaminated water, poor sanitation, or bad hygiene practices,» said World Vision’s Communications Director, Eloisa Molina.
«We know how to bring clean water to communities that lack it, but it takes economic investment and political will to prevent us from witnessing thousands of deaths due to the consumption of non-potable water,» she asserts.
2.2 BILLION PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WITHOUT CLEAN WATER
In 2024, the NGO provided clean water to 3.1 million people, domestic sanitation to 2.4 million, and handwashing facilities to 2.8 million. According to the United Nations, around 2.2 billion people live without safely managed clean water, with women and girls being the most affected by the scarcity.
This year, World Water Day’s theme is the preservation of glaciers, highlighting the urgent need to protect them and ensure freshwater resources to guarantee a stable supply for millions of people who depend on their water sources for human consumption, agriculture, and energy.
Glaciers store approximately 70% of the world’s freshwater, making them the Earth’s largest natural freshwater reserve. However, climate change is accelerating their melting, disrupting the global water cycle, and increasing the frequency of extreme weather events like floods and droughts, impacting the health and survival of millions of people.