What is it?
Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) is one of the main sectors of humanitarian aid, alongside food assistance, nutrition, health, and shelter.
Providing access to safe drinking water in sufficient quantities is essential in emergencies and crises. Basic sanitation and hygiene education are important for a healthy living environment.
Why is this important?
Access to safe water and sanitation is a basic human right. Unfortunately, at present, 2.2 billion people (1/4 of the global population) use unsafe drinking water sources.
Some 3.5 billion people (half of humanity) live without safely managed sanitation. In addition, 2 billion people (or 1 in 3) still lack basic hygiene services, including 653 million with no facility at all.
During emergencies, displaced people, especially for the most vulnerable (women, children, and persons with disabilities), often lack access to safe water, adequate sanitation, and hygiene. The reason is that water supply and sanitation systems are damaged, destroyed, or inexistent.
Water is a fundamental part of all aspects of life. It is closely linked to sustainable development and various areas such as food security, public health, poverty reduction, gender equality, climate, and the environment. Therefore, water helps achieve many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Climate change and urbanisation worsen water scarcity. They make it even more challenging to ensure that everyone has access to safe drinking water and sanitation, which is a human right.
Lack of access to clean water, basic sanitation, and low hygiene standards, increase the vulnerability to epidemic outbreaks.
According to the United Nations, around 1000 children under 5 years die every day due to unsafe water or poor sanitation.
The EU will continue to pay special attention to the protection of WASH infrastructures in armed conflict, an aspect that is well regulated in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) considering “It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.”
How are we helping?
The EU is one of the largest humanitarian donors of WASH assistance worldwide. It contributes around €200 million each year.
WASH has become a growing sector in development cooperation and action, as well as in humanitarian assistance.
EU humanitarian funding ensures timely and dignified access to sufficient and safe water services for people caught in humanitarian crises.
We are applying a human-rights based approach which can be summarised with the so-called AAAQ criteria: availability, accessibility, affordability, acceptability, and quality. It is applied together with our member states, and in line with the UN human rights framework for water and sanitation.
We base our interventions on the commitment that no one is left behind and the services and facilities provided are sustainable to remain available for future generations.
The EU increasingly supports projects incorporating WASH components within other humanitarian sectors such as health, nutrition, food assistance, shelter, and education.
Whenever possible, sanitation and hygiene promotion activities are integrated into water supply interventions to reduce the risk of water contamination and water-borne diseases.
This approach also ensures that projects are community-led and promote self-sufficiency, placing special emphasis on:
- enabling quick access to clean water, decent sanitation, and hygiene services during a crisis
- helping to build resilience and recovering capacities of the affected populations against crises
- taking preventive action against water-borne diseases.
The EU’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations department draws its expertise in this area from a network of national, regional and global WASH and shelter and settlements experts, as well as non-governmental organisation, the United Nations, and Red Cross and Crescent partners.
The EU prioritises 3 areas in the field of WASH:
- speed of response: the increasing frequency and scale of sudden-onset disasters require better reaction capacities. The EU improves logistical support for the humanitarian community to facilitate experts and equipment on site as early as possible.
- coordination: a fast response also depends on good coordination, which is essential for assessing and prioritising needs. The EU is working closely with the Global WASH Cluster - the main international platform led by UNICEF to coordinate humanitarian operations in WASH assistance.
- working with civil protection actors: the complementary roles of humanitarian aid and civil protection are key in the WASH sector. For example, growing WASH needs in urban humanitarian crises often require a technically adapted response. This can be provided through civil protection actions (e.g., setting up large-scale water pumps and purification systems to replace water infrastructure damaged in a natural hazard)
The EU is currently evaluating the implementation of its WASH policy over the period 2019-2023 - preliminary results are expected in mid-2025.
Facts & figures
2.2 billion people (1 in 4) still live without safely managed drinking water, including 115 million people who drink surface water.
By 2050, demand for water is expected to increase by 55%.
Every day, around 1000 children under the age of 5 die because of unsafe water or poor sanitation.
Around 4 billion people are hit by severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year.