Safe and clean drinking water for families in Sinjar, Iraq

Above: Marjana and her daughter using their household water filter to access clean drinking water. Photo: Sinjar WASH team/Save the Children

For 35-year-old Marjana*, accessing clean water became a daily struggle after returning to her home in Sinjar, Iraq, after it was reclaimed from ISIS.

Marjana, her husband and their four children were forced to flee when ISIS invaded their region in August 2014, and they ended up settling in an IDP camp in Kurdistan for more than three years.

In 2017, the Sinjar area was taken back from ISIS control, and people started to return home.

“When we returned to our village, we were shocked by seeing the amount of damage from the conflict,” Marjana said.  “It mainly targeted our houses, and the infrastructure, especially the drinking water sources.”

Before the conflict, clean and safe water was available easily, but accessing it was now a daily struggle for Sinjar returnees.

“We suffered a lot in the first two years after returning since we didn’t have any clean water source for drinking water. Instead, we collected water from polluted and untreated sources such as the boreholes we had in some houses,” Marjana said.

The raw, untreated water caused kidney stones, diarrhoea, and other waterborne diseases, especially for children.

“We were in desperate need of longer-term solutions, instead of buying clean water every day, which would cost a lot of money, and we couldn’t afford it financially,” Marjana said.

Save the Children’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene team, as part of Building Peaceful Futures consortium supported through the Australian Humanitarian Partnership, visited the village and worked to find longer-term solutions. In 2019 the team started to install water purification and treatment units for more than 2,200 families in the area. The teams also trained the families on how to use and maintain the units. The units can purify and treat 10-15 litres of water per hour.

“People could treat and purify water easily at their home to either drink or use it for cooking or other purposes, which also reduced the risks of water-borne diseases greatly,” said Marjana.

“In addition, access to drinking water became completely free. Thus we were able to save money or spend it on our other daily needs. And women didn’t need to spend much time collecting drinking water, leaving their children unattended.”

Marjana said she no longer worries about running out of clean water, and the costs to maintain the units are very low.

“My daughter was suffering from water-borne diseases, but this water treatment unit has contributed to improving her condition, and she feels much better now,” she said.

Through Building Peaceful Futures, Save the Children also carried out a number of other water, sanitation and hygiene projects, including rehabilitation of a water treatment plant, rehabilitation of household sanitation facilities, drainage improvement, distributing COVID-19 hygiene kits, and education on hygiene.

Building Peaceful Futures is a multi-year Australian Humanitarian Partnership response focused on supporting the return and reintegration of communities in Ninewa (Northern Iraq) and Kirkuk (Central Iraq).  Funded by the Australian Government, Save the Children Australia is leading a consortium of NGOs, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, CARE Australia and Handicap International.

*Name has been changed