The UN reported that 1.4 million people do not have running water in eastern Ukraine

Nearly 1.5 million inhabitants of eastern Ukraine are without running water, adding to the four and a half million who do not have adequate access to safe drinking water, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in a statement on Saturday.

More than seven weeks intense hostilities in Ukraine have devastated water and electricity networks, in a country where six million people struggle every day for safe drinking water, “one of the most essential human needs,” according to the UN.

Since the beginning of the war on 24 February, there have been at least 20 incidents in eastern Ukraine alone that have damaged the infrastructure of the water supply, especially in the Donbas region, where this situation aggravates eight years of previous conflict between the Ukrainian Government and separatist militias and threatens push the entire supply system towards “total collapse”.

“Water is essential to life and a right for all,” said OCHA Coordinator for Ukraine, Osnat Lubrani. “Poor water quality can lead to diseases, such as cholera, diarrhea, skin infections and other deadly infectious diseases,” he added.

The situation is especially critical in the besieged city of Mariupol, where “tens of thousands of people are likely to use dirty sources in search of water”, as well as in the major cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, where 340,000 people risk losing access to drinking water if the reservoir dries up Horlivka.

The cities of Sumy and Chernigov suffered serious water cuts in early March and the Kharkiv system is also severely affected, according to OCHA estimates.

Attacks on experts have further deteriorated the situation. According to the UN, four water technicians were injured in Chernigov and one in Kharkiv, adding to at least 35 water engineers who were killed or injured in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces since 2014.

“It is imperative that the parties to the conflict respect their obligations under international humanitarian law and constantly care about preserving civilian infrastructure. In cases where water facilities are damaged, water technicians should be able to repair the supply without fear for their safety,” added the humanitarian.

Finally, the UNICEF representative in Ukraine, Murat Sahin, recalled that children are especially vulnerable to this crisis.

“Young children living in conflict zones are 20 times more likely to die from diarrheal diseases related to unsafe water than from direct violence as a result of war,” said the national head of the UN Children's Agency.

“Children's access to water, wherever they are, should not be compromised as a result of the war, because for them it is a matter of life and death,” he said.

(With information from EuropaPress)

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