Water, sanitation and hygiene

What is it?

Water, sanitation, and hygiene, often referred to as WASH, is one of the core sectors of humanitarian assistance. 

Ensuring access to safe and sufficient drinking water, basic sanitation, and hygiene is essential for safeguarding human life and health and plays a crucial role in preventing the spread of diseases.

Humanitarian WASH operations: 

In 2025, the largest EU-funded humanitarian WASH interventions were in: 

Syria, Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, Chad, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia and Myanmar.  

Why is this important?

Access to safe water and sanitation is a basic human right.  

Yet 2.1 billion people (1/4 of the world population) lack access to safe, sufficient, accessible and affordable drinking water. 

Some 3.4 billion people live without proper sanitation. In addition, 1.7 billion people still lack basic hygiene services, including 611 million with no access to any WASH facilities at all.

According to the WHO, unsafe WASH leads to 1,4 million preventable deaths each year. 

WASH shortages

During emergencies, the most vulnerable, including displaced people, children, women and persons with disabilities, often face severe WASH shortages. This is largely because water supply and sanitation systems are damaged, destroyed, inaccessible, or inexistent.  

Climate change, urbanisation and rapid population growth significantly affect water availability and access. Ensuring WASH is essential to preventing disease and epidemic outbreaks, reducing child mortality and supporting maternal health.  

How are we helping?

The EU is one of the largest humanitarian donors of WASH assistance worldwide. It contributes around €200 million each year.  

Against the current global trend of declining humanitarian and development funding alongside escalating WASH needs, the EU remains a reliable and principled donor. EU humanitarian funding ensures timely and dignified access to sufficient and safe water services, basic sanitation and hygiene for people caught in humanitarian crises.  

Some of the largest WASH interventions supported by the EU are in:

Ukraine, Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Chad, Afghanistan, DRC, Somalia and Ethiopia. 

Wash actions

The EU humanitarian WASH actions are typically part of other humanitarian actions, including:

• health
• nutrition
• shelter and settlements
• food assistance
• education in emergencies 

They prioritise vulnerable groups and systematically mainstream:

• gender
• age
• protection
• environmental considerations 
   

The EU also prioritises the following: 

Speed of response

As the increasing frequency and scale of sudden-onset disasters require fast reaction capacities. To ensure humanitarian assistance is delivered quickly to affected people.

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.

Capacities

Supporting the technical skills of WASH professionals and deployment of experts to ensure quality, durability and resilience of WASH services for vulnerable people.

Working with civil protection partners 

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 due to a natural hazard).

The sustainability of WASH actions in the humanitarian field also depends on the availability of longer-term funding for the rehabilitation of infrastructure and/or the provision of services by national or local systems. In conflict settings, it is also very much dependent on actions aiming to bring stabilisation and peace. 

The EU strongly advocates for compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) to support the safety and security of water resources, water personnel, and water infrastructure.