World Water Day 2024: Invest in women for peace and water security

Ringler, Claudia. 2024. World Water Day 2024: Invest in women for peace and water security. IFPRI Blog. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://www.ifpri.org/blog/world-water-day-2024-invest-women-peace-and-water-security/

The theme of this year’s World Water Day (March 22), “Water for Peace,” could not come at a more opportune time. Global water, food, and humanitarian crises have reached near-unprecedented levels: As a 2023 conference of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences concluded, “The world is facing the highest number of violent conflicts since the Second World War. These conflicts are major triggers of humanitarian and food crises, reducing access to production factors, social safety nets and trade, and causing forced displacement.” More on World Water Day 2024 from IFPRI’s Claudia Ringler.

Humanitarian crises are forcing hundreds of millions of people around the world to live in conditions without dignity. Currently, more than 100 million people are forcibly displaced, while 850 million face medium or high-intensity conflicts and food and water insecurity. Many lack access to basic sanitation and clean water for drinking and other household purposes, and many face hunger.

More broadly, 2.2 billion people globally lack access to clean, safe drinking water; while 3.5 billion lack access to safely managed sanitation services; 3.4 million people die each year from scarce or contaminated water sources.

Because water is essential to life, the lack of water is a crisis multiplier—an underlying factor contributing to and compounding conflict and humanitarian crises. But this also means that improving water management can reduce the potential for conflict—and when conflict occurs, help to ease its impacts.