Water Ways July 2022

WATER WAYS WORK AROUND THE WORLD FOR WATER

JIMEL PRIMM THROUGH THE LENS OF LEADERSHIP

WATER RUNS THROUGH US A DOCUMENTARY

Volume 2 Issue 7

July 2022

Phewa Lake Lumbini Sanskritik, Nepal Rebekah Long Photography

July 2022 Volume 2 Number 7 www.youthforglobalhealth.com

Table of Contents

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Editor's Note

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Water Runs Through Us Documentary

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Zimbabwe: Dire Lack of Clean Water in Capital

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Human Right to Water and Sanitation

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UNEP Names Jason Momoa Official Advocate for Life Below Water

“Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there.” — John P. Kotter

Editor’s Note Students of color are missing out on STEM opportunities, so the planet is missing out on their brilliance.

From climate change to health to economic growth — and our most potent opportunities require problem-solving skills rooted in STEM. Ten of the top 14 fastestgrowing industries require some kind of STEM training. Yet, according to a team led by Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist, and director of Opportunity Insights, we’re losing innovators and their breakthroughs every day because people who could “have had highly impactful innovations” are not being given the opportunities they deserve.

Youth for Global Health & Social Justice is proud to serve communities of color worldwide with programs that provide an extra layer of learning opportunities for young people in water infrastructure (engineering) and the cause, treatment, and prevention of water-borne disease (science).

Sound the STEM alarm, brilliance is waiting!

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Dr. Sheryl Simmons Editor-in-Chief

Produced by

Jimel Primm Documentaries have the power to educate.

Documentary films are an in-depth and informative resource that is a perfect platform to create dialogue.

They serve as powerful tools that bring important topics to the table in a captivating way that also sparks conversation and sometimes even social movements.

Jimel Primm will lead his team of 20-somethings dreamers in the development of Water Runs Through Us, a documentary about the cause, impact, and possible solutions of the global water crisis. The goal of the documentary is to educate and challenge young people 35 and under to become advocates for sustainable development goal (SDG) #6. clean water and sanitation as a human right for all.

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Documentary

Water Runs Through Us

The mind is like water. When it’s turbulent, it’s challenging to see.

When it’s calm, everything becomes clear. – Inspired by Prasad Mahes

Deondrae Jones, 26 Videographer, Photographer

Team of Dreamers

Braelyn Brown, 24 Director, Filmmaker, Video Editor

Rebekah Long, 21 Photographer

Jimel Primm, 23 Producer, Photographer, Artist, Creative Director 6

Zimbabwe: Dire Lack of Clean Water in Capital Urgently Tackle Years-long Crisis in Harare

A woman collects water at a borehole in Mabvuku, Harare in Zimbabwe

(Johannesburg) – Residents of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, face a potable water crisis three years after a deadly cholera outbreak, Human Rights Watch said today. Zimbabwe’s central government and the Harare City Council should urgently act to ensure clean water for millions of people affected.

The water situation in Harare is largely the same as in 2008, when Zimbabwe experienced the most devastating cholera outbreak in Africa in 15 years. The outbreak killed 4,200 people and infected at least 100,000. Human Rights Watch found that the city’s perennial water crisis, which is linked to the cholera outbreak, is the result of the city’s obsolete water infrastructure, a ballooning population, severe droughts, and pervasive government corruption and mismanagement. Poor governance and disputes between the central government and the Harare City Council have hindered efforts to address the problems.

“Harare’s long unresolved water crisis is a ticking time bomb of magnified health risks that forces residents to seek alternative, often unsafe water sources,” said Dewa Mavhinga, Southern Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Zimbabwean authorities at the national and local levels should work together to promptly and permanently end Harare’s dangerous water problems.”

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Human Rights Watch interviewed 85 people in October 2019 and July and August 2021 water in five densely populated, or high-density, areas (Budiriro, Glenview, Highfields, Mabvuku, and Mbare) who had no access to safe drinking water: in Harare, the peri-urban informal settlement of Epworth near Harare, and the surrounding towns of Chitungwiza, Norton, and Ruwa. Human Rights Watch also interviewed 11 central government and municipal officials, public health experts, legal experts, city council employees, and staff of nongovernmental organizations and United Nations agencies in Zimbabwe. Human Rights Watch also reviewed reports from the government, UN, nongovernmental groups, and the media on water issues in Harare.

The infrastructure for piped water in Harare was developed in the 1950s, before Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, and designed for a population of 300,000 people. Currently, Harare’s greater metropolitan area has about 4.5 million people, more than half of whom have no access to clean water and are at risk of water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid.

The water crisis in Harare has affected people’s rights to water and sanitation as well as other related rights, including the rights to life, food, and health. “Sometimes we get city council water in the taps,” a woman from the high-density suburb of Mabvuku told Human Rights Watch. “It is not clean. We cannot drink it and, because it smells badly, we cannot use it to cook.”

Common water sources, namely shallow wells, taps, and many boreholes – deep, narrow wells – are often contaminated, Human Rights Watch said. However, despite the known risk of contaminated water, there is no specific official information on which water sources are safe, leaving residents to take their chances.

“The water that comes out from the taps is neither clean nor safe to drink, so we have to depend on borehole water, which we feel is better,” said a 46-year-old woman from Harare’s Glenview suburb. “But we know that even borehole water is not safe for drinking.”

More affluent families in Harare’s low-density suburbs drill safe boreholes and purchase bottled water, options not available to the vast majority of the population. The humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) in Zimbabwe has developed a method of protecting new boreholes from contamination with sanitary seals, but local governments have not adopted this solution, which costs several thousand US dollars per borehole.

Under section 77 of Zimbabwe’s 2013 constitution, “every person has the right to safe, and potable water.” The government is obligated to take reasonable legislative and measures, within the limits of available resources, to achieve the progressive realization right to water. Zimbabwe is also a party to African regional and international human treaties that recognize the right to water and sanitation.

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clean, other of the rights

Locals wait for their turn to collect water from a borehole in Warren Park, Harare, Zimbabwe, September 24, 2019.

The government at the national and local levels should urgently act to ensure alternative sources of safe drinking water, such as safe boreholes and protected wells, for the entire population, Human Rights Watch said.

“Zimbabwean authorities should not wait for the next cholera outbreak to provide access to safe drinking water for everyone,” Mavhinga said. “The government should invest in low-cost water equipment and distribution systems to uphold the right of millions of Zimbabweans to potable water.”

Harare’s Water Crisis The millions of residents of Harare and the surrounding areas have been hard hit by the region’s water crisis. In Mbare, a high-density suburb of Harare with the country’s biggest and busiest bus terminus and a vegetable market visited by thousands daily, residents said that water and sanitation facilities are insufficient.

Blocks of “bachelor flats” in Mbare, built and designed for one-person occupancy during colonial times, now house large families, severely straining the limited water resources.

Because of the lack of water, the flush toilets are severely inadequate, unsanitary, and in many cases are nonfunctional. Both Harare and Chitungwiza have numerous open markets in which thousands of people set up stalls to sell meat, vegetables, fruit, and livestock. Still, the markets lack adequate water and sanitation facilities. For instance, at the Kamunhu Shopping Centre, the Harare City Council established about 2,000 market stalls for traders, but it did not provide running water.

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Residents who at times get tap water described the water’s quality as poor. A 53-year-old woman from the Mabvuku high-density suburb said: “Now we get water in our taps twice a week in the evenings, but we cannot drink that water, we only use it for washing. For drinking and cooking water, we [go to] boreholes where we wait sometimes four hours to get it.”

Those who have no access to tap water rely on boreholes for all their water. A 32-year-old mother of two in the Highfields high-density suburb said that her tap water was shut off after she failed to pay Zim $6,000 (US$70) in water bills over six months. Consequently, she depends on the potentially dangerous water from the borehole. “Many people queue to get water from the borehole, but we do not know if the water is safe to drink,” she said.

The boreholes are also not always reliable or accessible. A 56-year-old mother of three in the Budiriro high-density suburb said: In 2019, we had a borehole working here in Budiriro 5. We would spend over six hours waiting for water, but it was better if we had a borehole nearby. The borehole has not been working for the last five months. We must now walk a long distance to Mufakose, another residency area, sometimes at night, to fetch water from boreholes.

The Chitungwiza municipality depends on treated water supplied by the Harare City Council.

The water supply in Harare directly affects the Chitungwiza municipality, which gets rationed water as a result. Epworth, an informal settlement adjacent to Harare, has no water infrastructure for its 120,000-plus residents. Instead, tens of thousands of Epworth residents have depended on a dam with stagnant, unsafe water for more than three decades, even though the water is unfit for human consumption. A 21-year-old woman who has lived her entire life in Epworth without tap water said: I know that the dam water is not safe to drink, and sometimes we fall sick after drinking the water, but I have no choice. I need the water to survive, and I have nowhere else to get water.

In Harare’s low-density suburbs in the north and east of the city, more affluent families have devised alternatives, including drilling safe boreholes and using bottled water, which costs Zim $86 (US$1) for a one-liter bottle. That is unaffordable for most Zimbabweans, many of whom live well under the poverty line.

Médecins Sans Frontières in Zimbabwe, which since 2015 has worked to bring safe, clean water to vulnerable communities, 2017 introduced new drilling and cementation techniques, placing sanitary seals to protect newly drilled boreholes from contamination. MSF reported that tested water from these boreholes showed “‘zero’ bacteriological and chemical contamination.”

MSF has since advocated drilling these safe boreholes to prevent contamination, including disseminating a toolkit on good water, sanitation, and hygiene practices that explain how to protect borehole water from contamination. However, the average cost is very high, ranging from US$5,400 to $6,000 per borehole, and Harare and surrounding towns have not adopted the cementation technology.

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Water Crisis Causes Several factors have contributed to Harare’s severe water problems, including economic decay; perennial droughts affecting Lake Chivero, which is dammed to supply Harare with water; the lack of maintenance of the old water infrastructure; the inability to procure the necessary chemicals to treat water sources; political struggles between the central government under the ruling party and the opposition-controlled city council; and corruption.

Economic Decay, Dilapidated Water Infrastructure Harare’s water supply comes from Lake Chivero dam water, which the city’s mayor, Jacob Mafume, says is so heavily contaminated with raw sewage that it requires many different chemicals to purify. Harare City Council’s water department uses 12 chemicals, including chlorine gas, aluminum sulfate, sulfuric acid, sodium silicate, activated carbon, and hydrated lime, to treat and purify water from the Lake Chivero dam. Most of these chemicals are imported and very expensive, creating a huge challenge for a country facing severe foreign currency shortages.

Ian Makone, a Harare city councilor, blamed leakages in the old, dilapidated, and inadequate water distribution network for the water crisis. “More than 40 percent of pumped treated water is not delivered due to leakages,” Makone said. There are cracks in both the water and sewage pipes because of the city’s failure to replace decades-old pipes several years ago, causing flowing tap water to be mixed with sewage in several places across Harare.

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Conflicts Between National and Local Authorities Zimbabwe’s government has an obligation under international human rights law to ensure that the right to water is met, regardless of whether the policies are carried out by the national government or delegated to local authorities. Political tensions between the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party, which controls the central government, and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDCA), which controls the Harare municipal government, has adversely affected water service delivery in the region.

The central government has not fulfilled constitutional provisions that allow for the devolution of power from the central government to the municipal level. Zimbabwe’s Parliament has not enacted legislation to establish appropriate systems and procedures to facilitate coordination between the central government and local authorities. Thus, while the Harare City Council has the responsibility to supply clean water to residents, the central government, through the Ministry of Local Government, wields the decision-making power. At the same time, the central government is responsible for constructing dams to provide water for cities, but no new dams have been constructed for Harare and Chitungwiza despite the existence of such plans for decades.

Harare’s Mayor Mfume told Human Rights Watch that inadequate laws authorizing the local government to provide water have hampered the city council’s efforts to address the water crisis and improve service delivery for the metropolitan area. “Currently, we are unable to operate effectively because our hands are tied by the Ministry of Local Government and the centralization that inhibits the operations of municipalities,” he said. “The mayors have no real powers.”

The MDC Alliance president, Nelson Chamisa said: The [ZANU-PF controlled] Ministry of Local Government still enjoys superpowers. It appoints all town clerks, CEOs, and other officials. This means they continue to sabotage our efforts for change. The government still approves and limits our budgets. We are not able to determine rates, leaving us unable to make enough money to provide adequate services.

The ZANU-PF party minister for the Harare metropolitan province, Oliver Chidawu, said the central government acknowledged the challenges of decentralization and the water crisis, and is in discussions about long-term plans, including the construction of new dams, but said the major challenge is funding. He said the government needs support from international donors to be able to have a comprehensive response to the water crisis.

Existing legislation makes it complicated and difficult for municipal authorities to address problems like access to clean water, the former mayor of Harare, Herbert Gomba, said. For instance, under the Joint Ventures Act, before the city can engage a private company for services, it must first send a resolution to the national Ministry of Local Government, which must then send a resolution to the Office of the President and Cabinet for approval.

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The Urban Councils Act prohibits cities from borrowing money or entering into contracts without Ministry of Local Government authorization. In addition, the Procurement Act removed procurement powers from local authorities and put the powers in the Office of the President and Cabinet.

The local and central governments have continued to blame each other without resolving Harare’s water crisis.

Local and National Government Corruption Public sector corruption and mismanagement at the local and central government levels have exacerbated the government’s neglect of water infrastructure over the last two decades, compromising access to safe, clean water. Transparency International’s 2020 Corruption Perception Index found that corruption is extremely high in Zimbabwe, ranking it 157 out of 179 countries. Corruption is rife in the central government as well as within the Harare City Council and Chitungwiza municipality, negatively affecting service delivery.

In July 2020 the anticorruption unit in President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s office arrested the then-mayor of Harare, Herbert Gomba, and other top city council officials, on allegations of corruption and abuse of office regarding approval irregularities in the sale of land and alteration of plans. Gomba’s case is still in the courts. Four months later, Mafume, who replaced Gomba as mayor, was also arrested on allegations of corruption, prompting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change to assert that the Zimbabwean government was using its law enforcement agents to target council officials from the MDCA. Mafume’s case is also still before the courts.

Domestic and International Legal Standards Guaranteeing the Right to Water Zimbabwe’s 2013 constitution protects the right to water. Section 77 of the constitution states that every person has the right to “safe, clean, and potable water.” Under the constitution, the state “must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within the limits of the resources available to it, to achieve the progressive realization of this right.”

The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Zimbabwe has ratified, does not expressly include the right to water. However, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has interpreted the right to water as being implied by various rights codified in the African Charter, including the right to “a general satisfactory environment” favorable to peoples’ development, which is unattainable without access to water and sanitation. The African Commission in 2020 published Guidelines on the Right to Water in Africa, which it said was grounded in regional treaties’ protection of economic, social, and cultural development; health; access to natural resources; the environment; and food In 2010 121 countries, including Zimbabwe, voted in the UN General Assembly to recognize a freestanding right to water. In 2011 the UN Human Rights Council endorsed the right to safe drinking water and to sanitation as basic rights.

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The General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2015 that states that the right to water entitles everyone, without discrimination, “to have access to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and affordable water for personal and domestic use.”

The UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights has interpreted international law on the right to water, as well as state obligations, in its General Comment No. 15. The state’s minimum core obligations include ensuring people’s access to sufficient, safe water and physical access to water facilities or services that are a reasonable distance away.

Zimbabwe has ratified international human rights treaties that contain – explicitly or implicitly – provisions on the right to water, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

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Holding Governments Accountable to Respect, Protect and Fulfil Human Rights

So what does the human right to water and sanitation actually look like?

To help answer this question, the National Association of Youth Organizations (NAYO), working with the Public Participation Platform members under the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations in Zimbabwe, has developed a set of indicators to track the government’s progress in realizing the human right to water.

The Public Participation Platform researched 6 districts (including urban and rural wards) - Chimanimani, Chivi, Gweru, Hwange, Mangwe, and Marondera - using the AAAQ framework, a tool developed by the Danish Human Rights Institute, to assess whether their right is being met. The results are striking: 15

Availability According to WHO, between 50 and 100 liters of water per person per day are needed to ensure most basic needs are met, and health risks kept at a minimum. But the AAAQ household questionnaire survey shows four of the study districts falling short of this international standard. The average availability ranged between a high of 100 liters per capita per day in Hwange and a low of 9.5 liters in Marondera. The average water availability for the other districts was Mangwe 57.5 liters per capita per day, Chimanimani 14.6 liters, Gweru Urban 28.5 liters, Gweru Rural 28.2 liters, and Chivi 27.5 liters.

Water supply disruptions result in residents collecting additional water from alternative, albeit free, sources that are usually unsafe - such as protected and unprotected deep wells, a dam reservoir serving Marondera town and burst connections on main holes. Across the study districts, Marondera Urban had the highest percentage (87.6) of residents reporting collecting additional water from alternative sources.

Accessibility The household survey revealed different primary water sources for urban and rural residents. Boreholes were identified as the primary water source in all the districts except Hwange, where piped water into dwellings was given as the primary source.

Other sources included dams and protected and unprotected wells. Except for the few households with boreholes and piped water within homesteads, most residents of study districts have access to water from communal boreholes. 67.7 percent across all the study districts reported sharing communal boreholes with at least 100 other households.

International standards stipulate that a person should travel less than 1km and take less than 30 minutes to collect water if it is outside one’s dwelling. High proportions of residents in rural areas in Chivi (40%), Mangwe (39%), and Gweru Rural (26%) travel more than 1km to collect water. Extreme cases were reported in rural areas of the same districts where some residents travel between 5 and 10km to collect water. This most adversely affects the elderly and people living with disabilities.

Average amounts spent on the water by residents range between $1.81 per month per household in Mangwe and $39.94 in Hwange. Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) indicated that these are amounts that most households find difficult to raise because of the prevailing economic hardships. Household incomes are mainly from self or informal employment.

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Quality Chivi residents pointed to dissatisfaction when water from underserviced boreholes is oily and reddish in color. Mangwe residents also highlighted the water being sometimes salty and difficult to drink. Marondera residents complained of the bad color and odor of water they sometimes receive.

Conclusions Many individuals are being denied their human right to water and sanitation. Still, the Public Participation Platform, which NAYO is part of, is using this evidence to push their government to improve the situation as part of the Keep Your Promises campaign.

This involves developing a National Plan of Action on Citizen Participation in Water based on the AAAQ research, targeting state, donor, and WASH actors. To aid this, NAYO is creating links between the most affected citizens at a community level who are grappling with water availability and their councilors, mayors, and parliamentarians.

Youth is a driving force, too, with young people demanding accountability, participation, and non-discrimination in delivery through debates and workshops between youth advocates and state actors.

Another project run by NAYO, the Child-Friendly Budgeting Initiative, further promotes youth involvement. Water is critical as it adversely affects school attendance, health and wellbeing, socialization, and safety (vulnerable to abuse, harassment, and violence at water points). Young people use Community Score Cards and Report Score Cards at the Ward level to assess service delivery and engage directly.

Tying into the human rights work, NAYO is running an “anti-prepaid water meter resistance campaign,” joining hands with labor unions, resident associations, womenled organizations, human rights institutions, and social movements.

It’s a fight against exclusionary practices in implementing metering – practices that work against the citizen participation necessary for good governance. It also hits on the issues of availability, accessibility, and quality. Setting measurable standards has to be at the heart of any installation.

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UNEP names Jason Momoa official Advocate for Life Below Water

Lisbon, 27 June 2022 – Movie star and ocean activist Jason Momoa was designated the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Advocate for Life Below Water today at a major conference mobilizing global support for an ocean besieged by the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and rampant pollution.

The UN Ocean Conference, co-hosted by Portugal and Kenya and attended by thousands of ocean advocates from business, civil society and government - including several Heads of State - will advance progress on science-based solutions to ensure better management and conservation of the ocean and its resources. The conference, which is aligned to SDG 14, life below water, stresses the critical need for scientific knowledge and marine technology to build ocean resilience, and is expected to culminate in a negotiated political declaration.

The Aquaman actor, who has worked with Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii and rePurpose Global, described how humbled he felt to be entrusted with the responsibility to promote ocean health: “With this designation, I hope to continue my own journey to protect and conserve the ocean and all living things on our beautiful blue planet, for our generation and the generations to come.”

The native Hawaiian with Polynesian roots, who has long championed the rights of people of island nations, described how growing up on one of the world’s most beautiful archipelagos ingrained in him a reverence for the ocean and nature that has only deepened over the years “For me, the ocean is an ancient teacher, a guide and a muse.

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It is also existential. Without a healthy ocean, life on our planet as we know it would not exist.”

Momoa, who is the star of Aquaman and the upcoming sequel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, made remarks ahead of the Youth and Innovation Forum, where he arrived on a boat to receive the Nature Baton from the UN Special Envoy for the Ocean, Peter Thomson. Momoa then handed the baton to youth representatives before they, in turn, passed it to the UN SecretaryGeneral. The Nature Baton, a global collaboration for the ocean’s wellbeing, has shone a spotlight on the need for action to save the world’s ocean, and is a metaphor for the journey ocean champions have taken this year from Brest to Nairobi for the UN Environment Assembly, to Palau for the Our Oceans Conference, and for World Environment Day in Stockholm, on the road to Lisbon.

“We are so pleased to have Jason Momoa joining the UN family as UNEP’s Advocate for Life Below Water. Jason has a strong track record of advocating for ocean issues, from reducing single-use plastic pollution to protecting coral reefs,” said UNEP’s Executive Director, Inger Andersen. “In 2021, the 4 primary measures of climate change – greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean temperatures and ocean acidification – all hit record highs. This means the time for action is now.”

“With a huge audience of engaged fans, we believe that Jason can move ocean considerations into the hearts and minds of citizens and business leaders to promote this urgency and action,” she added.

Early commitments from the conference include pledges from the United States and the European Commission to join UNEP’s Clean Seas Campaign, bolstering what is already the biggest campaign devoted to ending marine litter and plastic pollution in the world. They join newcomers Tanzania, Uganda, Cabo Verde, Rwanda and Portugal in an initiative that now represents 75 percent of the world's coastline. More voluntary commitments – following the 2017 conference’s 1,406 – are also expected to be made to address ocean-related issues that affect communities and countries.

At the Ocean Summit Event 17, governments – including Australia, Belgium, Ecuador, Ghana, Kenya, Thailand, Vanuatu, and 10 Brazilian states – pledged to join the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment. They join 11 governments who made the Global Commitment at the One Oceans Summit in February, as well the 500+ signatories who are supporting the transition to a circular economy and helping to address the plastic pollution crisis that threatens the health of our ocean.

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The landmark environmental conference, which is also aligned with the UN Decades of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and Ecosystem Restoration, played host to the ‘Giant Plastic Tap’, a three-story art installation constructed from 200 kilos of plastic waste supplied by local waste management company, Novo Verde and sponsored by Iberdrola and Cultura Inquieta. The brainchild of activist Benjamin Von Wong, the installation was originally constructed in Nairobi for the fifth UN Environmental Assembly, and now sits in the heart of Lisbon's multicultural district of Park of the Nations, where it isa visceral reminder to passersby of the scale of the plastic pollution problem and the urgency for humanity to ‘turn off the plastic tap’ from source to sea.

The need to restore and protect coral reefs is also a priority at the conference’s Sustainable Blue Economy Investment Forum, where the Global Fund for Coral Reefs, a UNEP and partner backed initiative and the world’s largest blended finance vehicle dedicated to SDG 14, will be bolstered by further financial commitments.

The 250+ event conference features four special events, including, a Youth and Innovation Forum, a High-Level Symposium on Water, and a Sustainable Blue Economy Investment Forum. Eight multistakeholder dialogues, on themes ranging from marine pollution and sustainable fisheries to marine technology and the promotion and strengthening of sustainable ocean-based economies - in particular for Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries - will review opportunities and challenges to spur commitments and ocean action.

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TOP 3 COUNTRIES WITH THE MOST CHOLERA CASES

Cholera is a disease of inequity that unduly sickens and kills the poorest and most vulnerable people – those without access to clean water and sanitation.” – Carissa F. Etienne, the Director of Pan American Health Organization.

Profuse vomiting, diarrhea and leg cramps, followed by intense dehydration and shock, are all symptoms of cholera. It is a highly contagious waterborne illness that can cause death within hours if left untreated. Cholera is mainly caused by drinking unsafe water, having poor sanitation and inadequate hygiene, all of which allow the toxigenic bacteria Vibrio Cholerae to infect a person’s intestine.

While cholera can be treated successfully through simple methods, such as replacing the lost fluid from excessive diarrhea, there are still many people around the globe struggling with the disease. There are 2.9 million cases and 95,000 deaths each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The countries that have the greatest risk of a cholera outbreak are the ones that are going through poverty, war and natural disasters. These factors cause poor sanitation and crowded conditions, which help the spread of the disease.

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Yemen Yemen is known for being one of the countries with the most Cholera cases. The number of cholera cases in Yemen has been increasing since January 2018; the cumulative reported cases from January 2018 to January 2020 is 1,262,722, with 1,543 deaths. The number of cases in Yemen marked 1,032,481 as of 2017, a sharp increase from the 15,751 cases and 164 deaths in 2016. On a positive note, the numbers decreased by February 19, 2020; 56,220 cases were recorded, with 20 associated deaths.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) The DRC is another country with a high number of Cholera cases. There were 30,304 suspected cases of cholera and 514 deaths in 2019. Although the number of 2019 cases was smaller than that of 2017 (56,190 cases and 1,190 deaths), the 2019 data showed an increase from 2018 (27,269 cases and 472 deaths). As of May 13, 2020, 10,533 cases and 147 deaths were reported; most of these reported cases originated from Lualaba regions, Haut Katanga and North and South Kivu.

Somalia Somalia also stands as one of the countries with the most Cholera cases. From December 2017 to May 30, 2020, there were 13,528 suspected cholera cases and 67 associated deaths in Somalia. These reported cases are from regions of Hiran, Lower Shabelle, Middle Shabelle, and Banadir.

Other than the three countries listed above, many others are also going through Cholera outbreaks. Uganda reported a new Cholera outbreak in the Moroto district in May 2020; a month later, 682 cases and 92 deaths have been reported. Burundi also declared a new cholera outbreak this past March; 70 new cases were reported.

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Helping Cholera Outbreaks Many non-profit organizations like UNICEF are constantly working towards helping these countries and many more. A good example of a country that has shown a great decrease in cholera cases following external aid in Haiti.

Haiti experienced the first large-scale cholera outbreak with over 665,000 cases and 8,183 deaths. After a decade of efforts to fight against cholera, the country recently reported zero new cholera cases for an entire year. An example of how UNICEF helped Haiti is by supporting the Government’s Plan for Cholera Elimination and focusing on rapid response to diarrhea cases. However, the country still needs to keep effective surveillance systems and remain as a cholera-free country for two more years to get validation from the World Health Organization (WHO) of the successful elimination of the disease.

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In creating this platform our goal is to leverage the power in the media & art form of film to enhance relationships between filmmakers, organizations, and the entire human population to build advocacy and activism in water-related matters.

We invite all filmmakers to submit films related to the 2022 UN World Water Day topic, Groundwater - Making the Invisible Visible, but all water-related topics are welcome for exploration.

Submissions begin on Friday, July 1, 2022 WWSFF will take place in December 2022 For more information: https://worldwaterff.org/