Child rights and peace

For UNICEF peace is both an enabler and outcome of the realization of children’s rights to live safe, healthy, fulfilled and peaceful lives in their homes, communities and societies. Violent conflict acts as an impediment to the realization of children’s rights. It harms children both directly and indirectly and undermines their potential as individuals and productive members of their families, communities, and society.

There are currently 460 million children living in conflict zones.[1] Children under the age of 15 who are living in conflict are on average nearly three times more likely to die from diseases linked to unsafe water and sanitation than from direct violence. Children who live in extremely fragile contexts are three times as likely to practice open defecation, four times as likely to lack basic sanitation services, and eight times as likely to lack basic drinking water services. In conflicts, deliberate and indiscriminate attacks destroy water infrastructure, injure personnel, and cut off the power that keeps water systems running. Attacks on water systems directly impact children – when clean water becomes unavailable children are forced to rely on unsafe water, putting them at risk of disease.

WASH and conflict sensitivity

Despite good intentions, WASH interventions in fragile and conflict-affected contexts are at risk of unintentionally worsening conflict or contributing to wider conflict dynamics. The choice of where to drill boreholes, how to share and manage resources among refugee/internally displaced populations and host communities, whether to allow water points to be used for crops and/or livestock, and how to govern water resources, distribution and/or access to WASH services in contexts where exclusion is prevalent, can all be contentious issues that if not managed effectively can escalate into conflict.

WASH interventions have not always and systematically considered how programming decisions can intersect with larger social, political, economic, cultural and environmental factors, and in turn contribute to, or exacerbate, conflict dynamics. Conflict and peace analysis is essential to understand how WASH interventions may worsen tensions and conflict, so that conflict risks can be identified, and relevant conflict sensitive strategies adopted to mitigate the same.

WASH and peacebuilding

As with other social services, WASH can serve as an important peace dividend if it is associated with the cessation of violence and as an additional benefit of a peace process or agreement between divided communities. Establishing more accountable and transparent mechanisms for water governance, which bridge state and non-state stakeholders, can lead to more effective water management and increased trust in the government, thus strengthening the social contract. WASH programming can create incentives for joint action and provide platforms for collaboration that strengthen inter-communal trust.

There are important opportunities for WASH to contribute to build and sustain peace, but many such opportunities are missed. This is due to a number of factors, including a lack of institutional capacity to develop and implement WASH-relevant conflict and peace analysis and effectively leverage findings to support programming. The WASH for Peace Guidance can help to develop much-needed staff and sector capacity and support the development of conflict-sensitive and peacebuilding WASH programming. It can inform new and existing programmes, and support UNICEF country offices, WASH teams, sector partners and other relevant stakeholders to identify and leverage opportunities to build and sustain peace through WASH.

Resources