Water Crisis Threatens Three Million in Yemen’s Taiz as Fighting Deepens Child Hunger

Escalating fighting and fuel shortages now threaten water systems serving an estimated three million people in Taiz, including at least 1.6 million children.

For 11-year-old Safa, collecting water has become something to fear. Displaced in Taiz, Yemen, she waits in long queues to fill her jerricans and watches people fight over access to a resource her family cannot survive without. "Life has become very difficult," she told UNICEF.

Escalating fighting and fuel shortages now threaten water systems serving an estimated three million people in Taiz, including at least 1.6 million children. In an area already among Yemen's most water-scarce, families are facing rising food prices, dwindling supplies and the possibility that the pumps providing their water could stop.

Families fleeing conflict find services under strain

An estimated 120,000 people have been displaced to Taiz since fighting escalated in September, accounting for more than half of those newly uprooted across Yemen. Many have fled repeatedly, reaching overcrowded communities with little food, limited clean water and few resources to meet their daily needs.

The fighting has disrupted vital supply routes, including the Taiz–Aden corridor, making food and fuel harder to obtain and more expensive. Essential services face suspension as the supplies needed to keep them running become scarce.

The World Food Programme has warned that wheat flour stocks in affected areas of Taiz are nearly exhausted. The governorate already faces some of Yemen's highest levels of food insecurity, with ten of its 16 districts previously classified at Emergency levels, or IPC Phase 4.

For parents struggling to feed their children, the shortage adds pressure to households that have already lost homes, income and access to reliable services.

Hunger and unsafe water put children at greater risk

UNICEF has screened more than 168,000 children in Taiz this year and found more than 52,000 to be acutely malnourished, nearly one in every three children screened. Those children need reliable access to treatment and safe water at a time when both are under threat.

Diesel shortages could bring water pumps to a halt, and the cost of trucked water has tripled since the latest escalation. Families struggling to afford food face increasingly difficult choices about how to obtain enough safe water.

Unsafe water and poor sanitation increase the risk of diarrhoeal diseases and cholera. These illnesses can worsen malnutrition by preventing children from absorbing nutrients, leaving them weaker and more vulnerable to further infections.

Across Yemen, the World Health Organization reports that suspected cholera cases have tripled in just three weeks. For children in Taiz, the combination of hunger, unsafe water and disease threatens to deepen an already dangerous situation.

Safa's experience shows how the shortages affect children even before they become ill. She described the daily struggle to collect water and the fear she feels when arguments break out around her in the queues.

Keeping water flowing and treatment within reach

UNICEF is supplying diesel to help keep water pumping systems serving an estimated three million people operational. It is also providing emergency water and sanitation services to more than 300,000 people.

Nearly 8,000 cartons of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food have been positioned in advance to support treatment for children with severe acute malnutrition, its deadliest form. UNICEF continues to support health facilities, nutrition treatment and essential water services.

Children receiving malnutrition treatment depend on continuity of care, and another illness caused by unsafe water can make recovery harder. Keeping pumps running and health facilities functioning is central to protecting them.

UNICEF has called on all parties to protect children and civilians, safeguard water systems and health facilities, and meet their obligations under international humanitarian law.

"Children in Taiz have already endured years of conflict and deprivation," the agency said. "They cannot afford to lose services that are keeping them alive."