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WATER POLITICS

Via The Yemen Times, a sobering report on the state of water – and related conflict – in Yemen.  As the article notes:

“Seventy percent of tribal conflict in Yemen is over water. Dozens are killed every year, daily life is disturbed, and development projects are put on hold because of fights over water wells and resources.

Each day, at least one in every ten Yemeni women has to walk one to five hours in order to bring back 20 liters of water to her home. The distance she walks is ever-increasing as, one after the other, wells dry up.

And the fight over water intensifies as resources become scarcer.

Yet a voluntarily blindfold covers the eyes of decision-makers when it comes to water and sanitation in Yemen, and this despite their international pledges to provide a better life for every man, woman and child in the country.

In particular, the UN’s seventh MDG, which our country ratified in 2000, states that half the 49 percent of Yemenis with no access to clean water are to be connected to a water and sanitation system by 2015. But, even in the most developed city in Yemen, the capital Sana’a, a city of only 2.2 million with an annual growth rate of seven percent, this goal is impossible.

Statistics from Yemen’s water authorities, such as the Ministries of Water, Agriculture, the Rural Water Organization and the Water and Sanitation Authority, say that even a service coverage increase of one percent is ambitious.

If the future consequences of water scarcity have not yet hit home, other issues also deserved to be considered.

Up to 35 percent of under-five child mortality -73 per every 1,000 live births- could be reduced by hand washing. You might wonder why such a simple procedure is not encouraged to save lives, but consider that the average water consumption of a Yemeni person ranges from120 to 130 cubic meters per year.

This means that a Yemeni consumes less than one third of a cubic meter a day, compared to the world average of 12 cubic meters daily. Can you imagine?

And there is more. Seventeen percent of these children’s deaths are caused by diarrhea, which is the number one killer of children in Yemen with 100,000 deaths annually. It could all be avoided with proper toilet hygiene. Yet only 43 percent of all Yemenis and 28 percent of those living in rural areas have access to adequate sanitation facilities.

Although homes are connected up to a water network in the cities, weak water pressure promotes corrosion and the development of bacteria inside water pipes. By the time water has made its way into our taps, it is already contaminated.

Finally, let me leave you with one thought. Most of the 22 million-strong Yemeni population lives in the highlands. I don’t know why, but still today Yemenis choose to live in the central mountain areas, leaving more than 2,000 kilometers of coastline –the longest in the Arab world with both the Red and Arabian Seas- virtually empty.

For one in every ten women, this means scrambling up a mountain with 20 liters on her head to provide water for her children every day, knowing that out of her ten children, one is likely to die before reaching the age of five.