Refining the UN's Approach to the Water-Security Nexus

Dec 3, 2018 | Danilo Turk
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Today, the world is increasingly aware of the dramatic meaning of water. Water stress and water-related disasters are among the main consequences of global warming and have severe humanitarian consequences. They often cause population movements and tensions resulting in violent conflict and threats to international peace and security. The sad history of the armed conflict in Darfur offers a recent example. Water can be a powerful driver of violent conflict, albeit generally not as a single or the main cause of war. In addition, in many ongoing armed conflicts water has been used as a weapon of war. Water infrastructures have often become targets of armed attack. All this has had an extremely negative effect on civilian populations and produced grave violations of international humanitarian law.