Each year, armed conflict disrupts millions of lives. It also disrupts the infrastructure that makes daily life possible, such as damage to water supplies. The protracted conflict in Libya, now going on 9+ years, has made clean water a luxury for many. Close to 70 % of the Libyan population depends on the Man Made River, a gigantic water supply pipeline that draws water from the aquifers in the south of the country and brings it up north. Even before the added complexity of COVID, the tasks at hand were enormous, and the resources, shrinking.

In this episode of the podcast, we have Hamza Oun, a water and sanitation engineer with the ICRC in Tripoli, Libya. Hamza is part of the ICRC field team responding to the Covid-19 pandemic in Libya, leading disinfection campaigns for Internal Displaced Persons shelters. We discuss the current situation, the additional challenge a global pandemic has created, and how there is hope in Hamza’s new Chlorine app, which allows people to take matters into their own hands. We also have a short audio diary from Mya Mya Soe, a water engineer in Myanmar, who shares about the water challenges in her own country. Hosted by Niki Clark.

Related:

• Libya: Ramping up its COVID-19 response

• ICRC’s Work on Water and Habitat

• ICRC’s Work in Myanmar