The United Nations Children’s Fund on Thursday published a report finding that attacks damaging or destroying water and sanitation systems in conflict zones tripled from 2021 to 2025. The agency said the rise increases children’s risk of disease outbreaks, malnutrition and violence.
The latest Water Under Fire report covers January 2021 through June 2026. It documents airstrikes and other assaults on water, sanitation and hygiene systems, on workers at those sites, and on communities that rely on them, across 23 countries and territories.
Recorded attacks grew from fewer than 45, in eight countries, in 2021 to more than 135, in 15 countries, in 2025, according to the report.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said such attacks “deprive children of safe drinking water and the essential services that rely on water to function effectively”.
The report identifies seven categories of assault. They include hits on plants that clean water, on pipelines and on wells, fouling of water sources, and limits on spare parts and chemicals used in treatment.
By March 2024, just one of 13 treatment plants in Sudan’s Khartoum state was fully operating, the report said. Since October 2023, sewage pipelines measuring more than 130,000 meters have been destroyed in the Gaza Strip.
Water can stop even when pipes and pumps stay intact, the report found. A drone strike on a gas field in Iraq in November 2025 cut power generation in the Kurdistan region by about 80%, and officials then split electricity among water projects, hospitals and cities.
UNICEF described indirect, lasting harm as reverberating effects. Without clean water, the agency said, health services cannot sterilize equipment, deliver babies safely or mix therapeutic milk for children with severe malnutrition.
The report documented children killed, injured or otherwise harmed while they waited for water, drawing many examples from the Gaza Strip. It said women and girls, often sent to collect water, face sexual violence and can lose time in school. It also noted that the United Nations recorded 14 water-facility workers killed in Lebanon during the 2024 conflict.
UNICEF’s Louise Wateridge reported on attacks that disrupted the water supply in Kyiv this week.
The report said funding cuts are weakening humanitarian work to maintain clean water. In countries with a coordinated humanitarian response on water and sanitation, 137.9 million people need that help, and only 26% of the money required this year has come in.
UNICEF urged parties at war, Member States, donors, and humanitarian and development groups to treat protection of these systems as essential to civilian survival, especially for children. It asked for systematic tracking of attacks, protection for people seeking water and for water and energy workers, safe access for those workers and for supplies, and investment in local arrangements that can keep services going in conflict.
“However, repairs cannot substitute for the protection of these facilities that is required under international humanitarian law,” Russell said.