Over 4 million people, including 1.5 million children face water shortages. [EN/AR] - Feb 2021
Water Sanitation
How the score is calculated
The score starts at 8. It adds points from recorded affected, deaths, displaced and casualty counts, plus terms found in the story title, event type or status. For each count, only its highest matching band is used.
- Affected people
- 1–999: +5 · 1,000–9,999: +12 · 10,000–99,999: +20 · 100,000–999,999: +28 · 1 million+: +35
- Deaths
- 1–9: +8 · 10–99: +14 · 100–999: +22 · 1,000+: +30
- Displaced people
- 1–9,999: +6 · 10,000–99,999: +12 · 100,000+: +18
- Casualties
- 100 or more: +8
- Story wording
- +10 for terms such as catastrophe, famine, war, conflict, major earthquake, mass casualty or critical. Otherwise, +5 for active, ongoing, emergency, outbreak, cyclone or hurricane.
Score bands: Watch 0–24 · Moderate 25–49 · High 50–74 · Critical 75–100. Scores are capped at 100. Missing or unparseable figures add no points.
This is a rule-based WorldsAid triage indicator, not an official or independently validated classification. It does not account for recency or local context, and it can understate events with incomplete reporting. Check the linked sources.
Historical record
Status: CLOSED · Imported 2026-10-07
Closed for this historical import at the site owner’s request; not a new assessment of current conditions.
In brief
- What happenedTripoli, 1 February 2021 – UNICEF expresses concern over the deteriorating WASH situation in Libya.
- How many affectedAffected persons: 4,000,000
- What help is neededOver 4 million people, including 1.5 million children will face imminent water problems if immediate solutions are not found and implemented.
What changed
First retained snapshot
No earlier verified snapshot is present in the recovered dataset. This record remains available as the historical baseline.
Situation
Tripoli, 1 February 2021 – UNICEF expresses concern over the deteriorating WASH situation in Libya. Over 4 million people, including 1.5 million children will face imminent water problems if immediate solutions are not found and implemented. The prolonged crisis has left the sector facing great challenges, leading to a significant decline in services. This is mainly attributed to the lack of required budgets for the purchase of equipment, operational materials and spare parts for regular maintenance. Suppliers are also struggling to open bank credits in hard currency to import equipment from outside the country. The repeated attacks on the Manmade River systems caused about 190 wells to be rendered out of service (Al-Jafara - Al-Hasawna and Al-Sirir-Tazarbo), bringing this vital sector to the brink of collapse. The General Company for Water and Wastewater suffers from the deterioration of the water network, causing the loss of large quantities of water of up to 50 per cent. In the sanitation sector, only 45 per cent of households and institutions are connected to the public network; the rest are connected to cesspits, which leads to pollution of groundwater reservoirs. Furthermore, most of the wastewater is discharged directly into the sea without treatment, negatively impacting the environment and marine life. Desalination Plants suffer from lack of equipment needed to carry out maintenance and chemicals to sustain operations, thus decreasing their operational efficiency. For instance, the Bomba Bay plant has been rendered completely out of service, depriving over 63,000 people living in the five cities - Al-Tamimi, Bambah, Ras al-Tin, Umm al-Razm, Murtaba, and the eastern coast of Derna - from access to safe water. The estimated cost for the rehabilitation of the plant is $ 12 million. This is taking place against the backdrop of the prevailing liquidity crisis that has put additional pressure on the financial ability of families to afford purchasing water by trucks, and, hence increasing their economic burden. Furthermore, the remaining 7 plants that provide water to cities of Abu Trabah, Sousa, Derna, Tubrok, Zletin, Alzawya, and Zwara are operating at 28 per cent of their design efficiency. They too will break down if no immediate intervention is undertaken. The situation has been exacerbated by frequent power cuts and lack of fuel needed for operations. All these conditions could lead to a complete system breakdown and stop water supply and sanitation services to vulnerable families and children.
Linked charities and agencies
WorldsAid verification
A WorldsAid editor reviewed this record against 1 attributed source, cleaned feed formatting and checked the crisis, place and reporting date. 1 human-impact figure was separated from the narrative and dated where the source allowed. Earlier observations remain in the evidence history instead of being silently overwritten.
Verified figures
- Affected persons
- 4,000,000 retained at 2021-02-02
What we knew when
- WorldsAid record entered the retained historical dataset.
- Last verification represented by this immutable snapshot.
Earlier figures are never replaced by later values; additional observations are retained as new ledger entries.
Provenance
This page renders the last verified WorldsAid cache directly in HTML. It does not treat generated summaries as primary evidence.
Cached dataset: worldsai_drup771.sql.gz
Verified
SHA-256 2461c1bf60229beb968c6097f751ab216b7b97fa57131f336518d0f6c7b5bb32