Bottles tied to ropes are lowered into an almost dry well in Bhaktapur, Nepal.Reuters
World Water Day is observed on 22 March every year to celebrate water, a finite resource, and raise awareness of water-related issues. The idea is to make people realize or think twice about how much water they waste every day. The UN estimates that more than 663 million people do not have a safe water supply close to home.
According to World Water Council, about 12% of the world population lacks clean drinking water, and water-related diseases account for 3.5 million deaths each year, which is quite more than car accidents and AIDS combined together.
The theme of World Water 2017 is "Why waste water?" The UN target aims to help improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping, minimising release of hazardous chemicals and materials and to substantially increase recycling and safe reuse globally.
Reports say that dirty water and poor sanitation can cause severe diseases in children leading to the death of thousands of children across the world or one child every two minutes. The World Health Organisation says infections caused by a lack of safe water and an unclean environment cause one death among newborn babies every minute in some part of the world. IBTimes Singapore celebrates World Water Day by presenting a series of powerful photos that shows one in ten people don't have access to clean, safe water.
A woman fetches drinking water from a well along the dried-up Chemumvuri river near Gokwe, Zimbabwe.Reuters
A slum dweller keeps an eye open fro trains as she collects water for drinking from a puddle in between railway tracks in Mumbai.Reuters
Slum dwellers collect drinking water from a submerged hand-pump after heavy rains in the northern Indian city of Allahabad.Reuters
A plastic container with a corrugated metal sheet placed on top to collect rain water is seen in Petare slum in Caracas, Venezuela.Reuters
People collect water along a dried-up river bed in Somalia's Shabelle region.Reuters
A boy collects water from a shallow well dug into the sand along the dried-up Shabelle River in Somalia.Reuters
Women fight as they collect drinking water from a municipal tanker on a hot summer day on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India.Reuters
The carcass of a caiman lies in the dried-up bed of the Pilcomayo river in Boqueron, Paraguay.Reuters
Boys collect recyclable items from polluted waters at Fish Harbour in Karachi, Pakistan.Reuters
A boy drinks water from a pipe in the rebel-held besieged town of Douma, east of Damascus, Syria.Reuters
A devotee carries a statue of the Hindu god Ganesh through the polluted waters of the river Yamuna in New Delhi, India.Reuters
A man drives a boat along a polluted river in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, China.Reuters
A girl sits on a boat on a dried-up pond in the drought-hit Kandal province in Cambodia.Reuters
A farmer waters a plant in Playitas town, Nicaragua, during a severe drought.Reuters
North Koreans wash their laundry as others skate on the ice on the Yalu river near the border with China.Reuters
A boy bathes on the side of the road in the southern Indian city of Chennai.Reuters
A boy bathes under a communal tap near a polluted water channel early one morning in Kolkata, India.Reuters
A woman carries jerry cans to fill them with water from a communal tap in Yemen's capital Sanaa.Reuters
A man carries buckets filled with water on the banks of the river Ganges in Allahabad, India.Reuters
A girl from the war-torn Blue Nile state collects water from a muddy pond in South Sudan's Doro refugee camp.Reuters
