XUNICEF News and Views

Have you ever been in a pickle where you had to "steal" information to correct a wrong?

To Bidet, or Not to Bidet? That is the Question!

Tara Handpump This article is not to track the creation and development of the Tara Handpump itself but looks at why it became so popular, so quickly.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player. That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more.

After five years in the making, the Graphix Project will officially launch in May 2026 with the release of our first graphic novel,

So it was that following some work in Nepal in 1979, where I ran into a number of VSO volunteers, that I felt compelled to visit the Head Office of VSO in London on my return to discuss my observations.

(Saddam Hussein's abandoned palace on Gara mountain in Northern Iraq  source ) What was the most impactful project you ever worked on at UNICEF? Mine is easy to recall. It was a WASH project that diverted water from one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces back to the villagers from whom it had been stolen.

    UNICEF staff – in former years – came with a range of skills befitting their respective roles.  Health staff often were recruited from the medical profession – or perhaps from the local barbers’ shop; nutrition staff sometimes had experience within their family’s kitchen.  Communication staff were normally good at writing fiction and, “Yes, you guessed it”: WASH staff knew something about how water behaves – like when you spill it, it takes forever to dry up.

  Global Water Bankruptcy: A New Era Beyond Crisis Author: United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) Publication: UNU-INWEH Report Date: 2025

  Gaza Joint WASH Assessment Report – August 2025 UNICEF and WASH Cluster Partners Click here for the full report: Gaza Joint WASH Assessment Report, August 2025 (PDF)

Report shared by Baquer Namazi All the outrage expressed world wide is not stopping the crimes against humanity by the current regime ruling Israel. However, public outrage must continue to be expressed, as pressure mounts among the justice minded jews in Israel and America, not to forget the whole world. Baquer

"UNICEF confirms an agreement (with Israel) was reached to re-establish the medium voltage feeder power line for the Southern Gaza Desalination Plant," said Jonathan Crickx, the agency's spokesman in the Palestinian territories." More than two-thirds of Gaza's sanitation and water facilities have been destroyed or damaged in Israeli attacks, according to data cited by U.N. agencies, and only an intermittent supply of bottled water has been allowed in since Israel imposed a punishing siege on the territory. The plant in Khan Younis, once resupplied with electricity, should produce enough water to "meet what humanitarian standards define as a minimum intake of 15 liters per day of drinking water per person, for nearly a million displaced people" in southern Gaza, Crickx said. Click here for the article in the Daily Sabah Note: The Khan Younis desalination plant in the Gaza Strip was established in 2017 with 10 million euro funding from the EU and impleme...

Completion of the expansion of the EU / UNICEF Gaza desalination plant in 2023  In the article below UNICEF's spokesperson, James Elder, sums up the situation well - "...the control of fuel and access to water is to control whether thousands - perhaps tens of thousands of children live or die."   The relationship between fuel and water, however, may not be well understood.  Over population has led to a depleted aquifer, causing seawater to replace the small amount of freshwater.  As a result, less than 5% of Gaza's water was safe for consumption even before the war.   In 2017 UNICEF, using funds provided by the EU, completed construction of the first water desalination plant in southern Gaza.  This plant served 75,000 people.  Just a few months ago, in June 2023, a second phase of construction was completed, increasing the number of people served to 150,000.  Desalination is a great technology for areas along the Mediterranean coast (muc...

Ahead of World Toilet Day on 19 November, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is launching a new game plan to help governments achieve safely managed sanitation for their populations and meet the sanitation target laid out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “ SDG 6.2 is about ending open defecation and providing access to safe sanitation and hygiene, and it is the furthest off-track of all the SDGs, and furthest in terms of underfunding,” said Ann Thomas, Team Leader, Sanitation and Hygiene, WASH Programme Division, UNICEF, at a UN Headquarters press conference on Thursday. 'Sanitation crisis' In a 2020 estimate, 3.6 billion people lacked safely managed sanitation services. The rate of sanitation coverage increase would need to quadruple to achieve universal access to safely managed services by 2030, Ms. Thomas said, describing the situation as “a sanitation crisis”, especially for women and children. Through the Game Plan to Reach Safety Managed Sanitation 2022-2030 ...

Schools are places where health and nutrition are nurtured and children develop lifelong healthy habits and behaviours. They should not be places where children fall sick with infection due to a lack of access to water, sanitation and hygiene services. Yet according to the latest  WHO/UNICEF JMP report,  around the world, 546 million schoolchildren still lack a basic drinking water service at their school; 539 million schoolchildren don't have a basic toilet, and over 800 million schoolchildren lack basic facilities with soap and water to wash their hands.  © UNICEF/UN0527585/Sujan Schoolchildren in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and in fragile contexts are the most affected – one third of children without basic WASH services at their schools live in LDCs, and over half live in fragile contexts. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where over half of schoolchildren still lack a basic drinking water service. New data show that even fewe...