World Water Day has been observed on 22 March every year since it was established by the UN General Assembly in 1993. The day highlights issues such as a billion people around the world not having access to safe drinking water. This year's event is focused on the links between water and energy. See the UN Water site for more info.
The idea is to make people think twice about how much water they waste. People who have plentiful access to water are encouraged to try not turning on their taps all day.
A woman fills a pitcher with drinking water from a hole made in the dried-up Banas river bed near Sukhpur village, north of the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. Villagers walk two and a half kilometres to draw drinking water from them, and they say it takes 30-40 minutes to fill a five-litre jarReutersA Bangladeshi girl swims with a jar of drinking water through a flooded residential area in NarayanganjReutersA resident washes clothes in a polluted pond in Xiangfan, Hubei province, ChinaReutersTwo boys fill a container with drinking water from a leaking pipe over polluted water in Noida in the northern Indian state of Uttar PradeshReutersPeople gather to get water from a well in the village of Natwarghad in the western Indian state of GujaratReutersCattle drink from what is left of a watering hole during a drought in Frei Paulo, in the northeastern Brazilian state of SergipeReutersDusabe Munyarugamba, 16, carries a container of water out of a cave as her sister Muhawe, 10, follows behind in Bukima, north of the city of Goma, Congo. The girls walk an hour in each direction daily to collect waterReutersInternal refugees carry water containers on their heads at Tomping camp, where some 15,000 displaced people are sheltered by the United Nations near South Sudan's capital of JubaReutersIsmael Adam, two, drinks at the Abu Shouk camp for internally displaced people, in El-Fasher, SudanReutersThe fingers of malnourished one-year-old Alassa Galisou press against the lips of his mother Fatou Ousseini at an emergency feeding clinic in the town of Tahoua during one of Niger's worst droughts in living memoryReutersA dried-up reservoir in Shilin Yi Autonomous County of Kunming, Yunnan province, ChinaReutersBottled water is dropped from a military helicopter to survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in Tolosa, Leyte in central PhilippinesReutersAn Afghan woman carrying a baby takes containers to fill with drinking water from a mobile water tank provided by CARE, an internationally-funded NGO, in KabulReutersResidents gather to collect water at a contaminated reservoir in Dafed village in southern Somalia's Lower Shabelle region during a cholera outbreakReutersChildren push a cart with water containers along a damaged street in Aleppo, SyriaReutersIndian men bathe under a broken pipeline in MumbaiReutersA young Syrian refugee drinks water from a tank at a refugee camp in Qushtapa on the outskirts of the city of Arbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan regionReutersAn Indian man climbs out of a well with a seven-litre rubber pouch strapped on his back to fetch a day's supply of drinking water, in the village of Chuda Chokad, west of Ahmedabad in Gujarat stateReutersA resident holds packets of clean drinking water to sell in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, during a cholera epidemicReutersA boy carries plastic bottles filled with water in the drought-hit village of Dashiqiao in Shilin county, Yunnan province, ChinaReutersVillagers row makeshift boats along flooded roads to collect drinking water and aid at Gopalpur village in Malda district in the eastern Indian state of West BengalReutersA man pushes a wheelbarrow loaded with drinking water in a mountainous area near Kabul, AfghanistanReutersRefugees, displaced by fighting between Congo's army and rebels, gather around dried-up taps at Bukanga transit camp in UgandaReuters
