By Amimou Kalemera and Tinotenda Muvuti
Every year on March 22, the world pauses to reckon with a resource most Americans take entirely for granted: clean water. Turn on a tap. Fill a glass. The water is simply there. But for more than two billion people on this planet, water is not a convenience. It is a daily crisis, and the weight of that crisis falls almost entirely on women and girls.
This year, the United Nations has named the theme of World Water Day 2026 Water and Gender, captured by the campaign slogan: “Where water flows, equality grows.” The theme is a recognition that the global water crisis isn’t just an environmental or infrastructure problem. It is a gender justice problem that is hiding in plain sight inside a statistic that, once you hear it, is impossible to forget:
Across 53 countries, women and girls collectively spend 250 million hours every single day fetching water — more than three times the time spent by men and boys. That figure represents the equivalent of over 28,000 years of human labor, erased from productivity, education, and civic life every 24 hours. (UN Women/UNDESA, 2024).
The numbers behind the inequality
The scale of water’s gender gap is staggering. 1.8 billion people still do not have drinking water on-premises, and in two out of three households, women are primarily responsible for water collection (WHO/UNICEF, 2023). In 53 countries with available data, women and girls spend 250 million hours per day on water collection. That is over three times more than men and boys (UN Women/UNDESA, 2024). That is time stripped from school, from income, from safety, and from civic life.
The consequences of unsafe water reach even into the first hours of life. Unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene cause the deaths of around 1,000 children under five every day(WHO/UNICEF, 2023). Almost half of global newborn deaths occur where health facilities have no water source (WHO/UNICEF, 2023), meaning water scarcity ends lives in the very places designed to protect them.
And yet, those most affected are least represented in the decisions being made. In 14% of countries, women still have no formal role in water decision-making (UNEP-DHI, GWP, UN Women, 2025). Worldwide, women make up just over one-fifth of the water sector workforce (Word Bank, 2026). The people designing the pipes and policies are overwhelmingly not the people most harmed by their failures.
The people behind the inequality
Abstract statistics only go so far. To understand what these numbers mean in a human life, travel in your imagination to Nfuanka, a village in the Kamuesha locality of Kasaï Province, Democratic Republic of Congo, roughly 100 kilometres from the provincial capital of Tshikapa. For decades, the only water available to this community flowed from an unprotected, contaminated spring. The result was an unrelenting cycle: cholera, typhoid, diarrhoea, and the particular cruelty of waterborne illness falling hardest on the youngest and most vulnerable.
For Ngalula Kadiomba Elysée, a 53-year-old resident of Nfuanka, daily life meant walking miles along isolated paths to carry back a few litres of water. And it wasn’t just her. The task fell to all the women in the village, and especially to young girls — the invisible workforce behind a chore that robbed them of school, safety, and childhood. In 2020, the hidden danger of those walks became devastatingly real when a young girl was attacked on her way to fetch water. The community’s water supply was costing more than effort. It was costing lives.
In 2025, ADRA’s TUDIENZELE project selected to rehabilitate the Kabilala spring in Nfuanka. But what made this intervention different wasn’t just the engineering. It was who was in the room when decisions were made. For the first time in the community’s experience, women, youth, and people living with disabilities were formally included in the planning dialogue. The project placed inclusion not as an afterthought, but as the architecture itself.
This approach mirrors exactly what today’s World Water Day campaign now calls for globally: a transformative, rights-based model where women’s voices and agency are not merely tolerated but treated as essential to building systems that actually work. When the Kabilala spring rehabilitation was completed in October 2025, it wasn’t just water infrastructure. It was evidence of what inclusion can build.
The changes in Nfuanka since the spring’s rehabilitation are measurable and immediate. Gilbert Ntumba, President of the community’s Health Development Committee, has documented a sharp drop in waterborne diseases during household visits. The newly formed Water Point Management Committee includes three women among its seven members. And in a striking act of community self-reliance, residents collectively contribute 3,000 Congolese francs (roughly $1.10 USD) each month to fund the spring’s maintenance and repair. The community doesn’t just have clean water. It owns and sustains its clean water.
For Denise Nduaya, a 16-year-old in Nfuanka, the change is measured not in policy wins or committee seats, but in minutes. “I fetch water without fear and I make it to school on time,” she said, smiling. Water is no longer an obstacle standing between her and her future.
Ngalula, who once walked those isolated paths in fear, dreams larger still: “My hope is to see the girls of Nfuanka become the future Water Engineers of Kasaï, so they can build springs for others.”
The TUDIENZELE impact and what comes next
Nfuanka is not alone. Across the health zones of Kamonia, Kamuesha, Kanzala, and Tshikapa, ADRA’s TUDIENZELE project has rehabilitated 30 springs — providing cleaner, more dignified water for more than 15,000 people, including 7,785 women. Each of those springs carries the same philosophy: that water solutions built without women are water solutions that will fail the people who need them most.
World Water Day 2026 is not abstract. It is being answered in the red-clay soil of Kasaï Province, one rehabilitated spring, one woman in governance, one girl walking safely to school at a time.
