World Water Day 2026 (March 22) will be celebrated at a high-level event at United Nations Headquarters in New York under the theme “Water and Gender Equality”, highlighting the links between equitable water access, sustainable development and human rights. Source: UN News

By Lyla Mehta and Alan Nicol
BRIGHTON, UK, Mar 19 2026 (IPS)

The 2026 campaign on World Water Day’s focuses on Water and Gender – ‘where water flows, equality grows’ . While substantial progress has been achieved across a range of gender indicators spanning education, health and public participation, the situation around WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) is still marked by deep inequalities with women and girls disproportionately affected – and this reflects the persistence of global patriarchy.

More than 2 billion people still lack access to safely managed drinking water. In households without piped water, women and girls are made to be responsible for about 70–80% of water collection trips worldwide, taking anything from 30 minutes to four hours daily. This time can instead usefully be spent on education, productive activities or even leisure and rest, but they don’t have the choice.

The situation is even more dire for sanitation with 3.4 billion people lacking access to safely managed sanitation. All this affects women’s and girl’s dignity, safety, security and the privacy and comfort needed for dignified menstrual health management. At the same time, there is poor progress on women’s economic participation.

These patterns have remained remarkably persistent despite improvements in water and sanitation infrastructure. The sheer time and labour required for poor women and girls around WASH activities, combined with gendered inequalities and power imbalances under the persistence of patriarchy not only directly affect girls’ enrolment in education but inevitably diminishes their capacity for productive economic activity, the net impact of which worldwide is a huge dent in human development progress.

Water as a weapon of war against women and girls

Not only that, but the apparent normalisation of wars and genocides wrought largely by men means almost daily violations of international humanitarian law including the weaponisation of water and sanitation infrastructure as a target of attack. Most recently, the United States’ bombing of a freshwater desalinsation plant in Iran and retaliation by Iran on another desalination plant in Bahrain set a dangerous new precedent.

When water and sanitation infrastructure become fair game in war, as we’ve seen in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine in the last few years, existing gender inequalities around water and sanitation mean women and girls suffer most, compounding risks including sexual violence.

Male violence and malevolence are back

What we’re seeing real-time and online is something even more worrying. That is the resurgence of more explicit patriarchy desiring control over women’s lives and subjugation into traditional roles away from public life. From the slashing of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes to the rollback of reproductive rights across the world from the USA to Chile, the resurgence of ‘toxic masculinity’ is forcing gender rights, feminism and equality off the agenda and they are equated with pejorative notions of ‘wokeism.’

Some institutions are already reframing debates in response. For instance, the World Bank is increasingly framing gender as about economic activity and jobs, rather than about rights. This is reflected in their new Water Mission implementation strategy that refers to employment but only mentions gender six times and women four times even though the gross inequalities in labour power and economic effects are, as stated above, so vast.

The gender backlash and reductionism in rights framings helps reinforce stereotypes and accepted norms, including the gendered division of labour in water collection, rather than confronting this more forcefully – and, at a minimum, asking why this is the case rather than accepted as a given.

If views persist that women and girls are responsible for water-related subsistence tasks, it ignores specific needs around sanitation and menstrual hygiene and increases male domination in decision-making and water management. Which is precisely what patriarchy seeking to achieve – domination and subjugation.

The rollback on funding for WASH continues

A year ago, Keir Starmer cut the UK aid budget by about 40 per cent. These cuts have been devastating for water and sanitation progress in some of the world’s poorest and most war-torn countries with direct and lasting consequences for women and girls. The cuts particularly impact countries like Sudan, Ethiopia and Palestine, already reeling from largely male-driven wars, conflicts and genocide.

It is estimated that around 12 million people will be denied access to clean water and sanitation as a result. These cuts directly affect gender equality because reduced access to water and sanitation impacts schooling, being at work and increases the risk of gender-based violence.

The UK justifies the cuts as a way to move away from direct aid around WASH to strengthening capabilities and partnerships. But these partnerships between the UK and Global South countries such as Nigeria focusing on growth, jobs and reducing aid dependency can backfire as more and more people’s health deteriorate, including more women suffering from ill health and long-term illnesses.

Ultimately, a waning collective effort to support gender equality in WASH provision opens the door to long-term decline in gender rights and economic development. Additionally, the dismantling of USAID is already having devastating consequences for gender equality and women’s health. Just when greater focus is needed on WASH projects to ensure we are not backsliding on gender rights, aid is being cut.

In sum, persistent inequalities, the gender backlash, illegal and forever wars and aid cuts lacking a moral compass have diluted global collective action on gender inequality. The least policymakers could do would be to achieve and maintain leadership that realises human rights for all in WASH provision, a substantial rationale for which has to be a big- ticket focus on the social and economic empowerment of women and girls.

Any other direction would be disastrous, enabling patriarchy and misogyny to grow even deeper roots in global society.

Professor Lyla Mehta is a Professorial Fellow at IDS and a Visiting Professor at Noragric, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. She trained as a sociologist (University of Vienna) and has a PhD in Development Studies (University of Sussex).

Dr. Alan Nicol is the Strategic Program Leader – Promoting Sustainable Growth, at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI)

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According to the UN, World Water Day, March 22, will focus this year on the theme, 'Glacier Preservation,' highlighting the critical role of glaciers in sustaining life and the water cycle. Glaciers, mountain run-off, and snowmelt provide nearly two billion people with water for drinking, agriculture, and energy production.

By Lyla Mehta
BRIGHTON, UK, Mar 21 2025 (IPS)

The principle of leaving no one behind is central to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The progress toward achieving SDG 6, which aims to ensure universal access to water, sanitation, and hygiene by 2030 is increasingly under threat with recent development funding cuts posing a significant barrier.

As humanitarian funding diminishes, vital water and sanitation projects, especially in low-income and crisis-affected regions, are facing severe setbacks. This World Water Day, humanitarian efforts are at a critical juncture and the consequences of inadequate support could leave millions without basic human rights of clean water and safe sanitation, further hindering global development.

Since Donald Trump took office for the second time, the US has cut close to 90% of its USAID budget with massive implications for global health, life-saving humanitarian efforts, water and food systems. Followed by the US budget cut, British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer announced a budget cut to the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) from 0.5% of the gross national income to 0.3%, ostensibly to beef-up defence spending – (this is well below the UN’s 0.7% target for ODA contributions). Other European countries like the Netherlands, France and Switzerland have also slashed their aid budgets.

These cuts have a huge impact on basic needs such as clean water and sanitation as some of the poorest countries in the world depend on USAID for over a fifth of their total assistance – making up about 11% of their income. The recent USAID cuts have left 50,000 people in Colombia, more than 270,000 people in Mali, and more than 400,000 people in Northern Burkina Faso without access to basics such as clean water.

There is a lot to criticise about foreign aid, not least due to how increasing amounts have been diverted to serve national or business interests, sometimes never leaving the donor country in the first place, such as the UK government spending ODA on housing asylum seekers.

Yet we must not forget that aid saves lives, about 3.3 million people per year from USAID alone according to recent estimates. The implications will be catastrophic for countries already struggling to meet their SDG targets. Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) targets under SDG 6 face particular challenges.

Back in 2020, UNICEF and WHO stated that “With only 10 years left until 2030, the rate at which sanitation coverage is increasing will need to quadruple if the world is to achieve the SDG sanitation targets”. Sanitation is already one of the most off-track SDGs. With these cuts, it’s very unlikely that sanitation coverage can be quadrupled to meet the SDG targets.

Globally, 800,000 children die every year due to diarrheal disease. According to WHO, 44% of children with diarrhoea in low-income countries receive the recommended treatment with little progress since 2000. As diarrheal disease burden ramps up on children and other vulnerable communities, morbidity and mortality will increase, not decline.

Recently, the Gates Foundation abruptly stopped its support for City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS), a programme that has played a critical role in promoting non-sewered sanitation systems in many parts of the global South. This has already had consequences on the 1.5 billion people without access to sanitation.

Everybody sh..ts, and the sh..t needs to be safely contained, especially in rapidly urbanising areas of the global South, as found by the Towards Brown Gold research project. Clean water is crucial for human wellbeing, planetary health and our agricultural and industrial economies.

Poor access to water and sanitation has serious implications for climate adaptation, girls’ education as well as food, health and nutrition security.

The aid cuts from the global North could also mean that global South nations find ways to prioritise and support basic services in their own countries, rather than rely on aid. But this is a long-term project and requires substantial political -economic rewiring. In the short-term, Ugandans are already reeling with thousands of jobs being lost, supply chains affected and wider economic ripples felt throughout the economy.

The looming end of the global consensus on the need for egalitarianism, humanitarianism and solidarity for the poorest and most vulnerable should terrify all of us. Yet these trends are not new. Under Boris Johnson at the height of the global pandemic, the UK already cut the WASH budget by 80% in 2021.

The cut of about £4 Billion (from £150 Million in 2019 to £30 million in WASH 2021) alone plunged millions around the world into water insecurity and led to unnecessary illness and deaths, especially of children.

Since October 2023, Israel has deprived aid to two million Palestinians living in Gaza and denied them even the barest minimum access to water and sanitation. The denial of fuel and electricity has led to a collapse in desalination plants, reducing water supplies for drinking, washing, and sanitation.

This deliberate denial of basic rights to water and sanitation has led to thousands of deaths, over and above 60,000 deaths due to malnutrition (also linked to lack of access to WASH).

By insufficiently condemning or sanctioning Israel due to these gross violations of established international law and global human rights, the Gaza genocide has revealed the callousness and hypocrisy of the global North and the wider international community. Current aid cuts build on this callous indifference and dehumanisation of black and brown lives in the Middle East, Africa and beyond.

While the US Government appears proud to destroy USAID due to the nationalist ‘America First project, we expect better from European countries. The UK government’s aid cuts are morally vacuous and indefensible. For one, the UK looks diminished on the global stage, especially in the eyes of emerging economies and the majority world.

You can’t ‘save the world’ from security threats if insecurities increase – and economic and social insecurities breed political insecurity. The UK and other European nations need to listen to Keynes’ advice from 1941 and further tax the super-wealthy of which there are many.

This is a less painful way to meet increased defence and social spending without compromising on aid budgets and the basic rights including access to clean water and sanitation of the world’s most vulnerable people. We all share the same global system, after all.

Professor Lyla Mehta is a Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and a Visiting Professor at Noragric, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. She trained as a sociologist (University of Vienna) and has a PhD in Development Studies (University of Sussex). Her work focuses on the water and sanitation, climate change, transformation, rights, resource grabbing and the politics of sustainability, scarcity and uncertainty.

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North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Credit: UNICEF/Olivia Acland

By Tanvi Bhatkal and Lyla Mehta
BRIGHTON, UK, Jul 19 2021 (IPS)

The UK government’s decision to reduce its Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget from 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) to 0.5% — a cut of around £4 billion this year — was confirmed last week by a majority of 35 votes in a House of Commons vote.

The cuts that came into effect from April this year have been especially devastating for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), a sector where the UK has been very prominent globally. Between 2015 and 2020, the UK helped 62.5 million people gain access to safe water and sanitation between 2015 and 2020.

A leaked memo of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) highlighted that cuts this year alone to bilateral aid for WASH could be as high as 80% – from £150 million in 2019 to £30 million in 2021. This sudden reduction will both undermine past progress, plunge millions into water insecurity and lead to unnecessary death, especially of children.

Providing clean drinking water is considered one of the most cost-effective ways of improving health and productivity across the global South. Inadequate access to WASH is responsible for 10% of the global disease burden, contributing to 1.6 million preventable deaths annually.

Having piped water frees up time for households, increasing opportunities for income generation, education, childcare and building social capital – especially for girls and women.

According to WaterAid, achieving universal basic water services would free up 77 million working days for women annually. Safe sanitation could prevent 6 billion cases of diarrhoea and 12 billion cases of helminths between 2021-2040, improving child health and nutrition.

For decades, OECD countries including the UK have been committed to improving access to drinking water and sanitation and, in 2010, the UN General Assembly officially recognized the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Despite this, 2 billion people globally lack access to safe water, and 3.6 billion – nearly half of humanity – lack access to safe sanitation. In fact, the WHO and UNICEF’s Joint Monitoring Programme recently announced that achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of universal coverage by 2030 will require quadrupling current rates of progress.

Water, along with pollutants and contaminating agents, flows into a canal in Maputo, Mozambique. Credit: John Hogg / World Bank

It is never a good time to renege on global commitments and cut support for water and sanitation services – but the timing couldn’t be worse than during a global pandemic.

The leaked FCDO memo recognises WASH as a priority area of UK Aid for the British public, especially in the time of Covid-19 and with the UK hosting the UN Climate Change Conference (COP-26). Yet, this is when the UK government decided to turn off the tap.

One example of a UK ODA-funded research project is Towards Brown Gold, which studies the sanitation challenge in off-grid small towns across Ethiopia, Ghana, India and Nepal – and examines how shit can be reimagined as a resource or “brown gold”.

This year the project is receiving one third of its original budget, with uncertainty of future budget restoration. This cut has been devastating to our partners, who have unstintingly worked to formulate collaborative plans and employ staff during the severe wave of Covid-19 in South Asia and civil war in Ethiopia.

These cuts have upset ongoing work and developing partnerships with local governments and communities to contribute to improved sanitation services for the most marginalised groups. Similar cuts have occurred across hundreds of projects on water, sanitation, public health, and even critical Covid-19 research.

The government argues that the cut of £4 billion in ODA is needed as the UK’s public finances have struggled during the pandemic. Yet, while curtailing ODA , the government spent £37 billion on Test and Trace – which was considerably more expensive than similar programmes in other countries and yet failed to deliver on its basic promise.

The government has also increased defense spending by £16 billion, a quarter of which could have protected its ODA commitments. This makes it clear that the cuts are not financial, but rather ideological. While the pandemic has highlighted the need for mutual solidarity, they undermine the idea of working together to enhance global public goods.

The significant cut to UK aid is undoubtedly having devastating effects, with prolonged uncertainty for lifesaving programmes, humanitarian efforts and crucial development progress.

With concerns that the strict economic criteria needed for a return to 0.7% risks making the ODA cuts permanent, it remains imperative for the development community and for citizens to continue to urge the government to prioritise funding for essential WASH services across the global South.

The cut to UK aid is a political choice, not an economic necessity: in the midst of a pandemic the cuts to the UK’s ODA budget negatively affect the world’s poorest, the UK’s reputation, and the effectiveness of research institutions in the UK and partners across the world.

No one is safe until we are all safe. How can the UK afford to renege on its global responsibility at such a time?

Tanvi Bhatkal is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lyla Mehta, Professorial Fellow, both at the Institute of Development Studies, UK

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