Why are water and sanitation such an issue in conflict zones?
Water, sewage and electricity systems are often among the first elements of a country’s infrastructure to be put out of service. This may be due to war damage, but systems may fail simply because technicians cannot get to installations in order to operate and maintain them. Conflict almost always forces civilians to flee, when they can. This can result in thousands of internally displaced persons arriving in an area where the water and sanitation installations were designed for a few hundred. And then those installations are shelled. And no-one can repair the damage because of the fighting. So people have no clean water and no sanitation. They drink dirty water, so they pick up water-borne diseases. They can’t wash, so they get hygiene-related diseases. Epidemics break out. People die. In many conflicts, more civilians are killed by disease than by bullets. The ICRC makes restoring access to water and sanitation one of its top priorities in a conflict situation. The ICRC often talks ab
