BOKO HARAM: Over 3.6m without water in Nigeria’s north east –UNICEF

BOKO HARAM: Over 3.6m without water in Nigeria’s north east –UNICEF 

 About 3.6 million people, mostly children in crises-ravaged areas of North-East Nigeria are without water and sanitation infrastructure, according to UNICEF.

The United Nations agency warned Tuesday, as World Water Week gets under way, that in conflict-affected areas in northeast Nigeria, 75 per cent of water and sanitation infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, leaving 3.6 million people without even basic water services. 

The Boko Haram terrorist group has killed thousands of people, with millions displaced,  since 2004 when it embarked on a violent campaign to establish an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria’s north east region.

UNICEF also noted, that Children living in fragile situations are four times more likely to lack access to basic drinking water

According to the body, more than 180 million people do not have access to basic drinking water in countries affected by conflict, violence and instability around the world. 

“Children’s access to safe water and sanitation, especially in conflicts and emergencies, is a right, not a privilege” said Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF’s global chief of water, sanitation and hygiene. 

Read also: UNICEF: Boko Haram has used 83children as ‘human bombs’ in 2017

”In countries beset by violence, displacement, conflict and instability, children’s most basic means of survival – water – must be a priority.” 

A recent UNICEF and World Health Organisation analysis also stated that people living in fragile situations are four times more likely to lack basic drinking water than populations in non-fragile situations.

“Of the estimated 484 million people living in fragile situations in 2015, 183 million lacked basic drinking water services”, it said.

UNICEF in a statement released on Tuesday, said that in Yemen, a country reeling from the impact of over two years of conflict, water supply networks that serve the country’s largest cities are at imminent risk of collapse due to war-inflicted damage and disrepair, and that around 15 million people in the country have been cut off from regular access to water and sanitation.

“In Syria, where the conflict is well into its seventh year, around 15 million people are in need of safe water, including an estimated 6.4 million children. Water has frequently been used as a weapon of war: In 2016 alone, there were at least 30 deliberate water cuts – including in Aleppo, Damascus, Hama, Raqqa and Dara, with pumps destroyed and water sources contaminated”, it stated.

UNICEF also said, “In South Sudan, where fighting has raged for over three years, almost half the water points across the country have been damaged or completely destroyed”.

“In far too many cases, water and sanitation systems have been attacked, damaged or left in disrepair to the point of collapse. When children have no safe water to drink, and when health systems are left in ruins, malnutrition and potentially fatal diseases like cholera will inevitably follow,” said Wijesekera. 

“In Yemen, for example, children make up more than 53 per cent of the over half a million cases of suspected cholera and acute watery diarrhoea reported so far.  Somalia is suffering from the largest outbreak of cholera in the last five years, with nearly 77,000 cases of suspected cholera/acute watery diarrhoea. And in South Sudan, the cholera outbreak is the most severe the country has ever experienced, with more than 19,000 cases since June 2016.  

“In famine-threatened north-east Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, nearly 30 million people, including 14.6 million children, are in urgent need of safe water. More than 5 million children are estimated to be malnourished this year, with 1.4 million severely so”, UNICEF stated.