UN-Water Chair Message

Women can be many things at once: mothers, workers, caregivers, leaders. When water is unsafe, or far from home, they are the ones expected to carry the burden on top of everything else.

Safe water and sanitation services, close to home, protect women and girls’ time, health, safety and opportunity – providing the foundation of a healthier, more fulfilled life.

Yet for millions, drinking water at home is still not a reality. In two out of three households, water collection is primarily women’s responsibility.

That can mean queuing or walking long distances to fetch water, often from unimproved or unsafe sources like rivers and ponds.

These daily journeys carry risks and indignities that are too often invisible.

This makes the water crisis a women’s crisis. And women remain underrepresented in the decision-making that shape water systems and services.

That must change.

It is time to centre women and girls in water solutions – as users, leaders and workers – so they can play an equitable role alongside men to ensure water-related services meet everyone’s needs.

We need women and men, girls and boys, to manage water together as a common good that benefits the whole of society.

Because where water flows, equality grows.

UN-Water Chair, Álvaro Lario