Background and objectives
Water lies at the heart of human survival, dignity and recovery in times of armed conflict. Its availability is critical for life, health, sustaining livelihoods and ensuring community resilience. Attacks on water systems are, in effect, attacks on entire ways of life.Footnote 1 The United Nations (UN) has aptly described water as a “matter of life and death”.Footnote 2
Water resources and water systemsFootnote 3 face escalating threats, in that deliberate attacks, strategic sabotage and incidental damage are becoming increasingly common.Footnote 4 Water systems rely on infrastructure, skilled personnel and consumables, yet those who operate and maintain them face growing risks, including injury and death, while the destruction of storage facilities and essential treatment chemicals has undermined operability.Footnote 5
The impacts are both immediate and long-term.Footnote 6 Even a single incident can trigger cascading effects across interconnected systems, revealing complex feedback loops that magnify the harm. Understanding the full scale of these cascading consequences is vital for resilient civilian protection strategies.Footnote 7 During armed conflicts, the inaccessibility, scarcity and inconsistency of data on incidents and their consequences drastically hinder protection and humanitarian action, and are further compounded by contexts of weak or collapsing local governance, overlapping climate-induced or natural disasters, and the inherent challenges of determining causation in complex emergencies.Footnote 8
International humanitarian law (IHL) and other branches of international law provide layers of protection for water systems in both international armed conflicts (IACs) and non-international armed conflicts (NIACs).Footnote 9 However, legal indeterminacies in the interpretation and application of certain rules governing the conduct of hostilities, specifically the principles of proportionality and precaution, coupled with the operational constraints of contemporary armed conflicts, can limit their effectiveness.Footnote 10
This article pursues three objectives: to analyze the patterns, motives and impacts of harm to water systems and the broader relationship between conflict, water and civilian vulnerability; to examine legal frameworks governing water in armed conflict and identify legal indeterminacies that hinder effective protection; and to advocate for a protective reading of IHL and for operational measures such as a World Health Organization (WHO)-style surveillance system to document damage to water systems, harm to personnel, and the resulting humanitarian and environmental consequences.
The analysis draws on treaty law, customary IHL, practice from recent conflicts and operational insights from humanitarian action. The focus lies on IHL but is enriched by complementary legal regimes. Particular attention is paid to protracted urban conflicts, where interdependence, complexity and cumulative harm intensify both risks and responsibilities.
Water in armed conflict: A lifeline under threat
The essential role of water for civilian survival
Water is life… and death!
Water is essential to human survival and dignity. Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are vital to prevent outbreaks of deadly diseases and to maintain public health, especially during emergencies. “Water is life”Footnote 11 is a phrase so often repeated that it risks becoming an empty truism, but for billions of people around the world, it remains a stark truth. In 2025, 3.5 billion people still lacked safely managed sanitation, and 2.2 billion had no access to safely managed drinking water, a global development gap with persistent effects in everyday life.Footnote 12 Within this wider crisis, a much smaller but far more urgent subset of people faces humanitarian emergency; of the roughly 300 million people requiring humanitarian assistance,Footnote 13 177 million needed life-saving WASH support.Footnote 14 These acute needs sit within the wider global deficit but are driven, and often sharply worsened, by armed conflict, where damage to water systems, displacement and insecurity transform chronic water challenges into life-threatening conditions.Footnote 15
“Water is death” may in fact be a more accurate motto in many places today. According to an estimate from 2019, the use of safe WASH services could have prevented at least 1.4 million deaths per year, including nearly 400,000 children under 5 years old.Footnote 16 In 2023, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that 4,000 people die from diseases attributable to inadequate WASH every day, and over 1,000 of these deaths are among children under 5.Footnote 17 Such figures are staggering, but likely conservative. Assessing the true burden of WASH-related mortality is challenging anywhere, but in conflict settings, it becomes exceedingly difficult – data are scarce and health surveillance systems often collapse.Footnote 18 Similarly, accurate records on attacks or damage to essential services are often lacking, and thousands of deaths linked to WASH failures remain unnoticed and unattributed.Footnote 19
Counting the hidden costs of water disruption in armed conflicts
Despite long-standing knowledge linking unsafe water and sanitation to deadly disease, dating back to Louis Pasteur’s work or the engineering of modern sewer systems in Paris and London, deaths from contaminated or inaccessible water are still treated as invisible collateral.Footnote 20 When infants die from dehydration and diarrhoea in a conflict zone, their deaths rarely make headlines or, even less, are mentioned in any courtrooms.Footnote 21 The causal link between disrupted water services and civilian deaths may be obvious and intuitive to those on the ground, but in the absence of data and safe access for personnel to document incidents and their impacts or determine which actors are responsible (legal attribution), these outcomes fall through the cracks of international concern and accountability and become, at best, a little-known and soon forgotten statistic.Footnote 22
Even though other drivers, such as under-development, water mismanagement or climate change, all contribute to water insecurity, armed conflict remains a cause of acute WASH needs.Footnote 23 This is especially true in urban areas, where populations are heavily reliant on complex essential service networks run by professional service providers or utilities.Footnote 24 In such contexts, damage or disruption to these systems is not easily compensated for by local coping strategies, as they often lack the means or technical capacity to repair complex critical services, leaving the population without basic services and increasing health and socio-economic vulnerabilities.Footnote 25
Critical vulnerability also stems from the nature of most water systems themselves. Like all essential services, water systems resemble vast, living organisms. They are not static in size or shape; they expand, shrink and reconfigure in response to needs and constraints. They are deeply interconnected with other systems and rely on an array of factors to function – infrastructure, but also a continuous flow of consumables such as treatment chemicals, spare parts, lubricants and fuel. Most importantly, they depend on people: in large cities, hundreds or thousands of skilled technicians and engineers work daily to operate, maintain and repair these systems.Footnote 26
Beyond the intrinsic vulnerabilities of water infrastructure, armed conflicts significantly impact water resources.Footnote 27 For example, during the Gulf War, oil spills and the bombing of wastewater facilities contaminated surface and groundwater in Iraq and Kuwait.Footnote 28 In the conflict in eastern Ukraine, fighting near industrial sites has led to the leaching of heavy metals and toxic chemicals into the Siverskyi Donets River, the region’s primary water source.Footnote 29 In Gaza, repeated damage to wastewater treatment plants has resulted in the discharge of untreated sewage into the Mediterranean and seepage into coastal aquifers.Footnote 30
Patterns and drivers of harm to water systems in armed conflicts
The harm that befalls water systems in conflict zones does not occur in a vacuum. It stems from a range of interrelated drivers, some rooted in the behaviour of belligerents during the conduct of hostilities, and others in the intrinsic fragilities and operational dependencies of water systems.Footnote 31 The reasons driving the behaviour of belligerents vary by context but often fall into overlapping categories: tactical advantage, political control and psychological pressure.Footnote 32
Conduct of hostilities and behaviour of parties to armed conflict
The weaponization or targeting of water sources, including diversion or control of rivers, can exacerbate water scarcity and undermine legal protections afforded to civilians and civilian infrastructure. Such actions, arising from a complex mix of tactics and broader political or military strategies, can cause multiple forms of harm: direct, indirect and cumulative.Footnote 33
Some attacks on water systems appear intentional,Footnote 34 and facilities may indeed be targeted deliberately under various rationales: tactical, such as invoking military necessity or classifying a pumping station or reservoir as a military objective, or strategic, such as aiming to deny resources to enemy forces. In some cases, though rarely acknowledged openly, attacking water systems or cutting water supply serves as a means to force displacement or punish a population.Footnote 35 Furthermore, even when water systems are not directly targeted, they often suffer through repeated incidental damage, particularly in protracted urban fighting. Hostilities involving the use of heavy explosive weapons in populated areas cause widespread destruction that renders infrastructure inoperable.Footnote 36
Beyond questions of intent, neglect or permissive legal interpretations also drive harm.Footnote 37 For example, reverberating effects and cumulative impacts, often unfolding over days, weeks or even months, are frequently excluded from proportionality assessments or precautionary planning.Footnote 38 This is partly because proportionality assessments are commonly applied in an atomic or isolated fashion, treating each individual attack as a discrete event. Such omissions may also stem from a genuine lack of operational data, the recognized difficulty of forecasting complex cascading effects, or deliberate disregard, under-appreciation or bad faith.Footnote 39 The long-term consequences of damaging essential service systems are often underestimated, whether sincerely or strategically, sometimes under the pretext that modelling such complex effects is not feasible. Moreover, the dual-use nature of many water-related assets further complicates assessments, increasing the risk of difficult or flawed targeting decisions.Footnote 40
In practice, precautionary measures required by IHL, such as verifying targets or minimizing civilian harm, may be inadequately integrated into planning processes, poorly resourced, or at times de-prioritized by treating them “more as a policy option than a legal obligation”.Footnote 41 In urban warfare, force protection concerns drive commanders to rely on tactics and weapon systems designed to minimize risk to their own forces.Footnote 42
Operationally, insufficient intelligence preparation of the battlespace, limited coordination mechanisms or dialogue with humanitarian actors, and a lack of civilian expertise among planners and commanders can result in ill-informed or oversimplified assumptions about the criticality of water systems.Footnote 43 When infrastructure complexity and interdependencies are not visible to those making decisions, the likelihood of causing unintended harm rises sharply.
Lastly, and beyond military actors, a systemic lack of awareness and attention to the consequences of conflict on essential services also constitutes a driver of harm. This is both caused by and contributes to the absence of surveillance, data generation and epidemiological tracking.Footnote 44 Deaths resulting from unsafe water or damaged infrastructure are rarely captured by real-time conflict monitoring; no number of newborns dying quietly from diarrhoeal disease competes for visibility with the more immediate and graphic toll of bullets and shrapnel.Footnote 45
Inherent vulnerabilities of water systems
Modern water and sanitation systems are complex, centralized and deeply interdependent.Footnote 46 Built for efficiency, they are vulnerable to disruption from single points of failure: a damaged pump, severed pipe, missing chemical or absent technician can disable an entire network.Footnote 47 Water systems are complex and depend on continuous flows of power, parts, staff and supplies, all of which can be interrupted by conflict-related conditions such as insecurity, sieges, fuel shortages or administrative paralysis. In urban areas, the interdependence of water, electricity, health care and sanitation amplifies these effects, where failure in one sector cascades into others.Footnote 48 Without protection, access or spare parts, even minor disruptions accumulate, leading to a gradual, systemic breakdown. Over time, the degradation can cross a tipping point beyond which recovery is impossible without peace, major investment or outside support.Footnote 49
Types of impact
The deliberate targeting or disruption of water systems inflicts far-reaching harm,Footnote 50 with the consequences unfolding over time as a continuum of direct and indirect impacts.Footnote 51 Direct impacts occur when water infrastructure is deliberately targeted or incidentally physically damaged during hostilities. Attacks that destroy a water tower, shell a treatment plant or prevent access to a pumping station through sniper fire can instantly halt supply to entire communities. Because these systems rely on a handful of critical components, such as power lines, control systems or pumps, the destruction of a single node can paralyze an entire network.
Indirect impacts or reverberating effects are the cascading consequences that emerge following the initial physical damage to water systems. They may not be immediately visible, but their consequences unfold progressively, contributing to prolonged humanitarian crises, weakening resilience and deepening the overall civilian toll of war.Footnote 52 Indirect effects begin with the disruption of services, such as the inability to treat or distribute water due to damaged pumping stations, power outages or obstructed supply lines, and extend to broader impacts on civilians. If power to a chlorination plant is cut, treated water cannot be delivered, exposing communities to unsafe water; when water systems fail, hospitals cannot maintain hygiene or deliver safe care; and damage to irrigation networks quickly translates into crop losses and worsening food insecurity. Such interconnectedness of essential services means that the failure of one system triggers failures in others.
Cumulative effects slowly erode system integrity over time. Accumulated damage from repeated small and large incidents and attacks over time – none of which is terminal on its own, yet none of which can be fully repaired – gradually degrades water systems until they eventually fail. Chronic underfunding, deferred maintenance and the loss of skilled staff further accelerate this collapse. Unaddressed leaks, failing pumps and lost institutional memory may seem manageable alone, but together they cripple the system. In protracted conflicts, this can reach a tipping point where recovery is no longer possible, water resources are irreversibly contaminated and technical expertise is permanently lost.Footnote 53
Overall, the humanitarian toll of degrading water systems reaches far beyond the battlefield. The true cost of armed conflict includes not only those who die from bullets or bombs but also those who die from dehydration, cholera or displacement – deaths that frequently remain uncounted and unpunished. These deaths rarely capture headlines, but they do jeopardize long-term recovery and peacebuilding.Footnote 54 Responding adequately begins with recognizing and documenting these often overlooked consequences of conflict.
Social dimensions of harm: Disproportionate effects on vulnerable groups
The impacts of armed conflict are most acutely experienced at the local level.Footnote 55 The destruction of essential services, particularly water and sanitation systems, magnifies pre-existing inequalities and creates cascading social consequences. Conflict disproportionately affects the most vulnerable members of society: women, children, persons with disabilities and displaced populations.Footnote 56 The gendered and intersectional dimensions of civilian harm remain under-documented and insufficiently addressed in military operations;Footnote 57 for instance, women who must travel farther to obtain water, through insecure and hazardous areas, face heightened risks in conflict.Footnote 58 Children, too, face unique vulnerabilities as lack of access to clean water and sanitation exposes them to heightened risks of waterborne disease, undernutrition and hygiene-related infections.Footnote 59 Similarly, persons with disabilities face the disproportionate impact of armed conflicts, including barriers to accessing essential services and humanitarian aid.Footnote 60
For displaced populations, particularly those living in informal settlements or overcrowded shelters, the absence of adequate water systems significantly raises the likelihood of disease outbreaks and environmental health crises.Footnote 61 In some cases, these impacts cross borders, where an influx of refugees heightens water demand, straining systems and deepening vulnerabilities for both newcomers and host communities.
From a legal standpoint, these realities raise critical questions regarding the application of the principles of proportionality and precaution under IHL. The foregoing social dimensions of harm must be made visible and integrated into the concrete obligations of parties to armed conflict in order to prevent and mitigate them. This requires the systematic collection of disaggregated data, context-specific analysis and the integration of these social dimensions into standard operating procedures, military manuals and training programmes.
Legal frameworks protecting water systems
International humanitarian law
Under IHL, the protections given to civilians and civilian objects are non-negotiable. When it comes to water and water infrastructure, IHL offers layers of protection for water systems and essential services, but a few uncertainties remain. To begin with, a fundamental principle of IHL states that “the right of the parties to the conflict to choose methods or means of warfare is not unlimited”.Footnote 62 The first layer of protection stems from the general rules governing the conduct of hostilities. IHL requires parties to adhere to the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution in both IACs and NIACs.Footnote 63
The principle of distinction necessitates discriminating between civilian and military objects and prohibits both direct and indiscriminate attacks against civilian objects.Footnote 64 Water systems, in principle, benefit from the presumption and protection accorded to civilian objects and, hence, must be spared from direct attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, reprisals and excessive incidental harm.Footnote 65 Even when water systems become a military objective, the principle of proportionality in attack prohibits launching an attack which may be expected to cause excessive collateral damage.Footnote 66 In most instances, the extensive consequences outlined above far outweigh any military advantages of targeting water systems.
In addition, IHL obliges parties to a conflict to take constant care to spare water systems and civilians.Footnote 67 Those who plan, decide upon and execute attacks must do everything feasible to verify that their targets are military objectives and that it is not prohibited to attack them.Footnote 68 Parties to an armed conflict must also take all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population and civilian objects under their control against the effects of attacks, and they should avoid locating, to the maximum extent feasible, military objectives in the vicinity of water systems.Footnote 69
Furthermore, during the conduct of hostilities, the use of certain means of warfare or weapons is prohibited, which is relevant for the protection of water. For example, IHL prohibits the use of poison or poisoned weapons intended or designed to kill or injure humans, which includes the poisoning of wells and water supplies.Footnote 70
The second layer consists of special protections for certain objects (works and installations containing dangerous forces, and the natural environment) against attacks and reprisals, and the prohibition of some specific methods of warfare. With regard to methods of warfare, IHL prohibits “attack[ing], destroy[ing], remov[ing] or render[ing] useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”, such as “drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works”.Footnote 71 The scope of the prohibition is broad and includes acts such as polluting or contaminating water resources (rendering water useless) that are indispensable for the survival of civilians. The only exceptions to the prohibition against attacking such objects are if they qualify as military objectives (i.e., where such objects are used as sustenance solely by members of armed forces, or are used in direct support of military action, and provided that such an attack may not be expected to result in the starvation of the civilian population or force its movement) or if the attack is in defence of a party’s national territory against invasion by another “Party to the conflict within such territory under [the defending party’s] own control, where required by imperative military necessity”.Footnote 72 Related to this, IHL prohibits the use of starvation of civilians, including indiscriminate use of starvation as a method of warfare against civilians and combatants alike (when the measure cannot be or is not directed exclusively at armed forces).Footnote 73
When it comes to objects with special protection, IHL prohibits attacking works containing dangerous forces, such as dams and dykes, and other military objectives located at or in their vicinity.Footnote 74 These protections are vital because even when such objects become military objectives, they shall not be attacked save for some stringent exceptions – i.e., only if they are used for other than their normal function and in regular, significant and direct support of military operations, and if an attack is the only feasible way to terminate such support.Footnote 75 It is interesting to note, however, that the customary IHL rules (though exceptions are discussed in commentaries)Footnote 76 and the treaty rules for NIACs do not include the exceptions enshrined under the corresponding treaty provisions for IACs – i.e., Articles 54 and 56 of Additional Protocol I (AP I).
Moreover, water resources benefit from the general and special protections given to the natural environment under IHL.Footnote 77 Among other protections, the use of means or methods of warfare (not just attacks) that are intended or may be expected to cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment is prohibited.Footnote 78 Water systems shall not be made the object of attack, even when they become military objectives, if such an attack is intended or may be expected to cause damage to the environment meeting this threshold.Footnote 79 Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that it will cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment that would be disproportionate constitutes a war crime.Footnote 80
Specific to the situation of occupation,Footnote 81 an Occupying Power must take all measures in its power to restore and ensure, as far as possible, public order and civil life in the occupied territory; to ensure, by all the means at its disposal, the necessities of life for the population in the occupied territory;Footnote 82 and to maintain public health and hygiene in the occupied territory.Footnote 83 If it cannot do so, a mandatory relief scheme is introduced.Footnote 84 In addition to ensuring unhindered access to humanitarian relief, IHL mandates the protection of humanitarian relief personnel and objects.Footnote 85 Thus, the Occupying Power must grant rapid and unimpeded passage and access to water-related personnel and consignments used for humanitarian relief operations, including the operation, repair or rehabilitation of water and related facilities. Occupying Powers must also respect the human rights of the population in the occupied territory, including the rights to water and sanitation.Footnote 86
Complementary legal regimes and other normative initiatives
Protections for water systems under IHL are reinforced by complementary norms in international human rights law, international criminal law and international environmental law, all aimed at protecting human life and dignity.Footnote 87 The human rights to water and sanitation are globally recognized,Footnote 88 and water is essential for the realization of all other human rights, including the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.Footnote 89 Attacks on water systems violate the human rights to water and sanitation, which are indispensable for leading a life in dignity, and infringe upon other rights, such as the right to life, health and food.Footnote 90 The fundamental nature of these rights and the scale and severity of the impacts of their violation on the survival and dignity of civilian populations elevate such attacks to serious human rights violations.Footnote 91
As elaborated earlier, IHL prohibits the use of starvation as a method of warfare against civilians, including by attacking, destroying, removing or rendering useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian populations. Under the Rome Statute of the ICC, intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival such as drinking water supplies, is a war crime in both IACs and NIACs.Footnote 92 The systematic deprivation of water can amount to the crime against humanity of extermination – i.e., the intentional infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of a population.Footnote 93 Such deprivation could constitute an underlying material act of the crime of genocide.Footnote 94 The Genocide Convention also obliges States to prevent acts that could create or inflict “conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group”,Footnote 95 such as poisoning of water and destruction of water systems. In this context, the ICC Prosecutor’s 2025 Policy on Addressing Environmental Damage through the Rome Statute represents a significant advancement in linking water-related harm with international criminal law.Footnote 96 Similarly, the emerging recognition of ecocide as an international crime reflects growing concern over environmental harm, including the destruction of water systems.Footnote 97
The Principles on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts (PERAC Principles), developed by the UN International Law Commission, emphasize that the environment must be respected and protected in accordance with applicable international laws.Footnote 98 They combine legal rules, principles and practices of States and non-State actors to strengthen environmental protection, including through prevention, mitigation and remediation measures.Footnote 99 They apply across the entire conflict cycle – before, during, and after conflicts, including situations of occupation – and are generally applicable in both IACs and NIACs. Specific to occupation, in its 2024 Advisory Opinion on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the ICJ reaffirmed that an Occupying Power is obliged to protect the environment and natural resources of the population under occupation.Footnote 100 The PERAC Principles recognize the importance of designating areas of environmental importance as protected zones in the event of an armed conflict, and encourage States to do so.Footnote 101 As water resources are part of the environment, rules and principles of international law are relevant to their protection.Footnote 102
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict (ICRC Guidelines) set out existing IHL rules that protect the natural environment in armed conflicts, and recognize that environmental protection, including of water resources, is reinforced by other applicable rules of international law.Footnote 103 Underpinned by the drafting history of AP I, particularly Articles 35 and 55, the Guidelines set out the ICRC’s understanding of the notion of the natural environment for the purposes of IHL, as constituting the natural world together with the system of inextricable interrelations between living organisms and their inanimate environment. The natural environment encompasses everything that exists or occurs naturally, including bodies of water, along with “natural elements that are or may be the product of human intervention”, such as drinking water.Footnote 104 The ICRC Guidelines emphasize the risks of using water as a method of warfare and the potential indiscriminate harm that this may cause, while commentary on proportionality, precaution and weapons highlights, inter alia, threats to reservoirs, aquifers and wastewater systems.Footnote 105 Rule 9 and Recommendation 17 of the ICRC Guidelines specifically call for the protection of areas of particular environmental importance or fragility.Footnote 106
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has recognized the interconnectedness of essential civilian services, condemning unlawful attacks on and the misuse of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population in Resolution 2573 of 2021. In its preamble, the resolution specifically refers to “objects critical to the delivery of essential services” as falling within this category of protection. Similarly, Resolution 2417 of 2018, adopted unanimously, highlights the link between armed conflict and conflict-induced food insecurity and affirms the need to protect water resources and infrastructure that support food security and public health.Footnote 107 The Security Council’s Arria-formula meetingsFootnote 108 and the UN Secretary-General’s annual reports on the protection of civilians have consistently emphasized the grave consequences of damage to or destruction of water systems during armed conflict.Footnote 109
Finally, relevant to NIACs, Geneva Call’s Deed of Commitment on the Prevention of Starvation and Addressing Conflict-Related Food Insecurity allows armed non-State actors to commit to respecting water systems.Footnote 110 It should be noted that most of the IHL rules discussed in this article also apply to armed groups. The Deed of Commitment explicitly includes drinking water and water installations as objects essential for civilian survival. While uptake has been limited so far,Footnote 111 the initiative represents an important way to promote greater ownership of existing legal obligations by armed groups and to reinforce the protection of water in conflict.
From norms to practice: Challenges and avenues for implementation
Legal ambiguities and misuse of protections
The rules on the conduct of hostilities aim to balance military necessity and humanitarian protection, but their interpretation by some States increasingly drifts from this purpose.Footnote 112 First, navigating the inherent indeterminacies of some key conduct of hostilities rules and the language used therein, which requires evaluating several legal and factual factors, remains a significant challenge.Footnote 113 Such indeterminacies are not inherently problematic but require IHL to be applied in line with its core values, especially the protection of human life.Footnote 114
Second, with regard to the notion of “attacks”, IHL primarily regulates individual attacks directed at clearly separated and distinct military objectives, or at most, “a specific tactical operation”.Footnote 115 This focus presents an inherent limitation: the risk of treating complex infrastructure as a collection of discrete or isolated objects, thereby overlooking system-level impacts and failing to account for how the loss of one component can disrupt other essential services. Besides, the cumulative effects of repeated strikes, particularly their long-term impact on the resilience of communities and infrastructure, are not explicitly addressed in most legal provisions, and some parties to armed conflicts overlook the factor of cumulative civilian harm.Footnote 116 Although an individual attack may not clearly breach IHL, the recurring nature of military operations, when assessed in a broader context, can raise serious legal and humanitarian concerns, as their aggregate impact can exceed the sum of their parts.Footnote 117 A caveat is that commanders should not be required to assess operations beyond their control or knowledge, as this could undermine legal and operational predictability.
Third, despite being a central pillar of the law governing the conduct of hostilities, the proportionality rule remains fraught with legal and operational ambiguity. One of the key sources of indeterminacy lies in the definition and application of the notion of the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. The ICRC Commentary on AP I clarifies that such an advantage must be substantial and relatively proximate in time, thereby excluding benefits that are merely long-term, speculative or political in nature.Footnote 118 The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) held in the Galić case that the proportionality judgment must be made based on the information reasonably available at the time, not in hindsight, but the line between ignorance and negligence remains difficult to draw.Footnote 119 In practice, some military doctrines and State practices have stretched the notion of anticipated advantage to encompass strategic or cumulative benefits achieved over time, raising concerns about the potential for overly broad justifications of otherwise destructive actions.Footnote 120 The expansive interpretation has been strongly criticized by others, who reject the linkage between the assessment of proportionality and the overall course of a conflict.Footnote 121 Further complicating matters, IHL compliance is increasingly shaped by politicized legal narratives, where civilian harm is too often assessed in light of political interests and the attacker’s identity rather than legal standards.Footnote 122 Hopefully, current initiatives such as the Global Initiative to Galvanize Political Commitment to IHL can help refocus attention on a culture of compliance, providing practical guidance to strengthen IHL implementation, including effective protection of civilian infrastructure.Footnote 123
Fourth, there is still uncertainty on whether and how to quantify and weigh the reverberating effects of attacks on water. The ICRC and UN bodies assert that all reasonably foreseeable reverberating effects, such as disease outbreaks from water shortages or displacement caused by infrastructure collapse, must be factored into proportionality and precaution assessments, based on available information and past practice.Footnote 124 This view is supported by both textual and purposive interpretations of IHL.Footnote 125 The scope of what is “reasonably foreseeable” is inherently relative and evolves over time, allowing IHL to adapt as empirical evidence and operational experience grow.Footnote 126 Some further argue that “systemic impacts” critical to the functioning of society or the State should be included, though doing so requires interdisciplinary expertise that is not yet consistently incorporated into military practice.Footnote 127
Fifth, with regard to the prohibition of starvation as a method of warfare, there are differing views on whether it applies only to deliberate or purposeful starvation of the civilian population, or whether it also extends to situations where, although not intended, the starvation of civilians is a “foreseeable consequence of a particular course of action”.Footnote 128 As per the ICRC, to “use starvation as a method of warfare means to provoke it deliberately” – such as by depriving a population of water or destroying water supplies – and is not confined to acts taken with the specific purpose of starving civilians.Footnote 129 Thus, cutting off the water supply and other essentials necessary for the survival of civilians and restricting humanitarian access as a method of warfare may constitute violations of the prohibition, even if the measures were not taken for the specific purpose of starving civilians. It has to be noted that the prohibition does not require waiting until civilians are actually starved, nor does it cover all starvation, such as that arising from the disruption of transport systems as an incidental result of the armed conflict, unless a party to the conflict was seeking to provoke starvation via such means.Footnote 130
Finally, the treatment of dual-use objects – those serving both civilian and military purposes – remains an unresolved issue.Footnote 131 Key questions include whether their civilian components must be considered in proportionality assessments or treated as wholly military in nature. The ICRC emphasizes that in planning attacks against critical infrastructure used simultaneously by civilians and armed forces, decisions on target selection, proportionality and precautions must be based on robust, multidisciplinary intelligence.Footnote 132
In general, addressing the above-mentioned issues requires that the interpretation and application of IHL be guided by its core objectives, foremost upholding humanity in war. Overly permissive readings of the rules on the conduct of hostilities risk eroding the balance between military necessity and civilian protection.
Practical barriers to effective compliance
Beyond challenges with the legal doctrine, a range of practical and operational challenges obstruct effective compliance with IHL to protect water systems during armed conflict. A critical gap lies in the scarcity of both direct and indirect data on the impacts of attacks on water systems. While some data exist for health infrastructure, most notably through WHO-supported systems such as the Surveillance System for Attacks on Healthcare (SSA) and the Health Resources and Services Availability Monitoring System (HeRAMS),Footnote 133 comparable mechanisms for water systems are lacking. The SSA collects and verifies data on attacks on health-care facilities (e.g., bombings, killings, looting) across multiple countries, providing a standardized global record and supporting advocacy and protection measures, while HeRAMS monitors the availability and functionality of health facilities and services in fragile and conflict-affected settings, offering real-time information to facilitate humanitarian response and resource allocation. A similar mechanism is needed to document and verify attacks on or disruptions of water systems, which have been under-reported to date, and to support operational responses and enable stronger assessments of compliance with IHL obligations.
The lack of data in this area hampers humanitarian response planning, limits awareness among belligerents that would impact their planning and execution of military operations, and weakens post-conflict accountability and legal analysis. Compounding this is the chronic scarcity of epidemiological data that can link water system damage to public health outcomes.Footnote 134 Epidemiological data refers to the systematic collection and analysis of information on disease incidence, mortality, causes of death and related health trends over time. Such longitudinal datasets allow researchers to identify patterns, establish correlations or causation, and quantify the public health consequences of disrupted water services. Without these data, it is difficult to measure increases in waterborne diseases, malnutrition or other health crises that may result from damage to or failures in water systems.
These gaps are exacerbated by institutional and operational dynamics. Military and humanitarian actors alike tend to prioritize immediate life-saving operations, such as food and emergency drinking water distribution, often at the expense of systemic or preventive water interventions.Footnote 135 Operational risk aversion, security constraints and donor preferences further narrow attention to short-term results. In parallel, the coordination among legal advisors, WASH specialists and militaries during armed conflicts is not that strong.Footnote 136 Protection concerns are frequently siloed, and WASH actors lack access to military decision-making structures or legal channels that seek to influence targeting and precautionary measures.Footnote 137
Another key barrier is the low visibility of water-related harm. While the kinetic effects of warfare, such as deaths from air strikes, are relatively better documented and publicized, indirect consequences receive far less attention. This “invisibility” reduces public and political pressure to address violations.
Finally, evolving military doctrines such as “total defence”, “smart warfare”, “whole-of-society” and “large-scale combat operations” (LSCO) increasingly risk blurring the line between civilian and military infrastructure.Footnote 138 When water networks function as dual-use objects, they are more likely to be treated as lawful military objectives, raising complex challenges for applying the IHL principles of distinction and proportionality, especially under the strain and tempo of high-intensity LSCO. The operational scale and velocity of such campaigns can overwhelm existing protection frameworks and impair the conduct of effective civilian harm mitigation measures.Footnote 139 Addressing these structural and doctrinal barriers is essential to ensure the law’s effectiveness in practice.
The case for a protective interpretation of IHL
Civilian harm in contemporary conflicts has multiple sources and is complex and overlapping.Footnote 140 This section makes the case for a protective and context-sensitive interpretation of IHL, one that remains faithful to IHL’s foundational purpose of avoiding or reducing human suffering. In an era of increasingly urban and protracted warfare, such an approach calls for the inclusion of indirect, reverberating and cumulative effects in the interpretation and application of key rules governing the conduct of hostilities.
IHL is a living body of law, capable of evolving to reflect current operational realities and accumulated knowledge.Footnote 141 The principle of humanity and the obligation to interpret IHL in good faith reinforce its protective purpose. For example, unlike the requirement that military advantage be concrete and direct, incidental harm under the proportionality principle need not be direct; foreseeable indirect effects must also be considered.Footnote 142 Similarly, the obligation to take “constant care”, though not precisely defined, provides a flexible basis for accounting for longer-term or cumulative harm, including impacts on essential civilian services and infrastructure and on the natural environment. Such a reading does not expand commanders’ legal obligations beyond what is feasible, but rather supports more informed decision-making.
All reasonably foreseeable reverberating effects, based on operational context, past patterns and available intelligence, must inform targeting decisions. Advanced technologies such as satellite imagery, drone surveillance and predictive analytics offer new tools for strengthening compliance. This is particularly important in urban settings and protracted conflicts, where attacks on critical infrastructure often result in cascading humanitarian impacts.Footnote 143 Civilian dependency on essential services must not be exploited, nor should attacks be used to provoke overreaction by the adversary, as such conduct risks eroding the hard-won balance between military necessity and humanitarian protection at the heart of IHL.
Besides, some argue that the assessment of “concrete and direct” overall military advantage under the proportionality principle should not be confined to a narrow, target-by-target basis but may, in certain cases, reflect the broader context of coordinated military actions aimed at achieving specific operational objectives.Footnote 144 Where such actions are clearly part of an integrated campaign, it may be legal and more realistic to assess military advantage in light of the specific military operation as a whole. By the same logic, civilian harm should also be considered cumulatively, and when foreseeable and within the scope of the operation, it ought to be factored into the proportionality analysis. It is important to note, however, that while the law clearly requires the anticipated military advantage to be concrete and direct, no such limitation exists regarding collateral damage.
Many cities today rely on centralized civilian infrastructure with limited redundancy.Footnote 145 The broader goal of the conduct of hostilities rules, protecting civilians against the effects of hostilities, must guide the interpretation and application of proportionality and precaution, taking into account and giving serious consideration to those foreseeable and compounding cascading effects.
With regard to dual-use objects, including water systems when used for both civilian and military purposes, the concept of internal proportionality is particularly relevant. Rather than treating such objects as wholly military once used for military purposes, this approach advocates for giving appropriate weight to their civilian components in proportionality assessments.Footnote 146 Factoring in the civilian component, if not shifting the balance toward avoiding targeting the object at all, at least helps to anticipate and limit collateral damage, thereby resulting in a more humane application of the law.
The protections given to water systems, including the special protections, should be extended to essential services personnel responsible for their operation and maintenance.Footnote 147 Growing legal and moral recognition of the life-saving role of these personnel stems from their vital contribution to ensuring safe water system operation.Footnote 148 Essential service providers must have safe, sustained access to affected areas in order to operate, maintain and repair critical infrastructure.Footnote 149 Parties to armed conflict should collect and assess data on how military operations impact essential service personnel and the availability of critical resources, ensuring this informs both political and military planning.Footnote 150 Where possible, advancing engagement with these providers can help to identify their needs and enhance protections.Footnote 151
As noted, damage to water systems has disproportionate social impacts. A protective interpretation of IHL responds to the lived realities of affected populations, acknowledges how disruptions worsen inequalities and promotes inclusive civilian protection.Footnote 152
Operational strategies for enhanced protection
Operationalizing the protection of water systems during armed conflict requires proactive strategies that go beyond legal compliance and engage the planning, targeting and logistical dimensions of military and humanitarian-development operations. One effective measure is the integration of water systems into military operational planning, including intelligence preparation of the battlefield or operating environment. This involves mapping interdependencies between water systems and other civilian services, identifying choke points and incorporating critical infrastructure into no-strike lists or restricted target lists.Footnote 153 While no-strike lists are a long-standing practice in many professional armed forces, their application to water systems remains inconsistent. Stronger results can be achieved by drawing on remote sensing technologies, open-source mapping and the knowledge of technical specialists and local actors.Footnote 154 In this vein, the ICRC’s guidance on urban warfare stresses the need to understand infrastructure systems holistically and to anticipate cascading failures across interconnected services.Footnote 155
Critically, structured interaction between humanitarian agencies, armed forces and legal experts can help translate legal norms into concrete operational behaviour. There is a growing consensus on the need for military planners and engineers to engage directly with WASH actors, local water authorities, and environmental and public health experts in order to better anticipate both the immediate and long-term consequences of attacks.Footnote 156 This engagement helps assess the foreseeability of public health crises arising from the destruction or degradation of water systems, an essential element in evaluating the legality of attacks under IHL.Footnote 157 Importantly, such multidisciplinary engagement should not be limited to State armed forces; it must also extend to non-State armed groups, taking into account the specificities of each group. Enhancing their understanding of the operational, legal and humanitarian consequences of damaging essential services is critical to reducing harm to civilians, which tends to be particularly important in protracted and asymmetric conflicts.
Infrastructure damage in protracted conflicts has shown how water system failure can lead to widespread disease outbreaks, displacement, and system-wide collapse of public health services.Footnote 158 Integrating the expertise of water and health professionals into targeting processes enables more accurate forecasting of these impacts and more ethically and legally sound decision-making. Moreover, intelligence preparation of the battlefield (IPB) and military risk assessments must evolve to account not only for tactical objectives but also for long-term systemic impacts on infrastructure, such as cumulative degradation of water networks over months or years.Footnote 159 In practical terms, this would entail expanding the analytical scope of IPB to include interdependencies among critical infrastructure systems – water, power, sanitation and health – and the effects that their disruption may trigger. Incorporating expertise from WASH engineers, epidemiologists and civil infrastructure specialists would allow planners to model potential cascading failures and better anticipate civilian harm. Good practices can be drawn from multidisciplinary assessment frameworks such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Comprehensive ApproachFootnote 160 and the ICRC’s work on urban services during armed conflict, which emphasize systems-based analysis and cross-sectoral input in operational planning.Footnote 161
In parallel, negotiating water-related ceasefires, protected zones and humanitarian access arrangements, such as demilitarized areas or temporary pauses in hostilities, can mitigate damage and enable emergency repairs or delivery of treatment supplies. These arrangements must be grounded in respect for the neutral, impartial and independent role of humanitarian actors, and supported by operational coordination.Footnote 162 Finally, the protection of water sector personnel and supply chains remains a critical concern. Local security guarantees, deconfliction tools and the safeguarding of chlorine or spare parts in transit are essential for the continuity of water services. Collectively, these strategies demonstrate that with foresight and coordination, the humanitarian impacts of conflict on water systems can be significantly reduced.
Time for a collaborative system to gather and share data?
Enhanced protection of water systems and essential services during armed conflict demands more than legal compliance. Despite growing recognition of the harm caused by attacks on critical infrastructure, humanitarian and legal responses are often hampered by the absence of timely, reliable data. Establishing an integrated and collaborative system for data collection, analysis and cross-sectoral coordination could significantly strengthen this effort.
Two complementary streams of information are essential to close this gap. First, incident-based reporting of attacks, disruptions and other violations, linked to conflict dynamics and infrastructure types, is vital for assessing compliance with IHL and triggering protective measures.Footnote 163 One promising model is WHO’s SSA, launched in 2018 under the mandate of UN Security Council Resolution 2286, which systematically tracks and verifies attacks on health facilities and personnel in conflict zones. Early experience with the SSA indicates promising results: it has improved visibility of attacks and generated information useful for operations and advocacy. While it is too early to assess its overall impact, initial signs suggest clear added value.Footnote 164 Second, public health and epidemiological data are needed to quantify the severity and duration of impacts on affected populations, including mortality, malnutrition and disease outbreaks related to water disruption. These data streams remain fragmented and under-resourced, with few shared platforms linking military, humanitarian and legal actors. Outbreaks of cholera, diarrhoeal diseases, or spikes in child malnutrition often trace back to disruptions in water systems, but without reliable, granular health data, these links remain anecdotal or delayed.Footnote 165 A systematic collection of epidemiological data is urgently needed to understand the full scope and consequences of water-related harm.
Although developed independently, the SSA complements WHO’s HeRAMS, which has tracked the availability and functionality of health facilities since 2008. While HeRAMS provides a baseline of system capacity, the SSA captures incidents of violence and damage, with the two systems together offering a more complete picture of the status and vulnerability of health systems in emergencies. Other models, such as the Health Information System Programme used in WHO-led Health Cluster responses,Footnote 166 the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response system developed across AfricaFootnote 167 or the Global Task Force on Cholera Control coordinated by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and WHO,Footnote 168 show that even in fragile settings, robust multisectoral coordination is possible when backed by political will.
The present authors are of the view that a comparable mechanism for the water sector to document damage to or destruction of water systems, harm to water personnel and the broader consequences for civilians and the environment is vital. Such a system could, for instance, integrate technical assessments from WASH specialists, humanitarian access reports, and satellite-based monitoring to capture both immediate impacts and the cumulative degradation of water systems over time. To ensure protection of sensitive information, data management could be coordinated by a neutral body, in partnership with technical agencies and local authorities, with tiered access protocols to balance transparency and security. Establishing clear safeguards for privacy and compliance with humanitarian principles would be essential to maintain trust and facilitate operational use across actors. Such activities are part of the Global Alliance to Spare Water from Armed Conflict, initiated by the Geneva Water Hub (GWH) and the governments of Slovenia and Switzerland.Footnote 169
A more systematic approach would not only improve the quantification of harm, anticipation of secondary impacts, and advocacy for the protection of essential services when prioritizing emergency responses but would also support the effective implementation of the law, strengthen accountability processes and guide cross-sector policy reform.
Conclusion and recommendations
Protecting water systems, services and personnel is protecting civilians. This article has demonstrated that damage to or destruction or misuse of water systems during armed conflicts can have severe and far-reaching consequences. Such actions deprive civilians of essential resources, fuel public health crises, drive displacement and cause lasting environmental harm.
The continuity of water services, the integrity of infrastructure and the safety of personnel must be fully integrated into military planning and operations. This includes recognizing and accounting for the cumulative effects of repeated or indirect damage, which can slowly erode system functionality, institutional capacity and resilience of essential services. Over time, such degradation, especially when compounded by insecurity or access restrictions, can have consequences as severe as those resulting from a single large-scale attack.
To translate legal obligations into real-world protection and meet the urgent needs of affected populations, legal compliance must go hand in hand with practical measures. A critical step in this regard is the systematic collection and sharing of data on damage to or destruction or misuse of water systems and the humanitarian and environmental impacts that these can cause. Such data must inform proportionality and precautionary assessments, particularly where prior harm has already heightened the vulnerability of water systems. This information is also essential to guide humanitarian responses.
Based on the foregoing, the authors recommend the following:
• To establish a neutral and collaborative mechanism to systematically record, verify and analyze incidents of damage or destruction to water systems. In line with UN Security Council Resolution 2573’s call for strengthened reporting on the protection of objects indispensable to civilian survival, such an initiative would benefit from high-level multilateral backing. It could be championed in relevant international fora, considered as part of a future Security Council resolution, and integrated formally into the agenda of the newly appointed UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Water.Footnote 170
• To integrate water systems and service continuity considerations into military planning, legal reviews and operational decision-making. This will help to minimize harm and improve understanding of civilian harm patterns in contemporary conflicts.
• To adopt national policies that assign clear institutional responsibilities for the protection of civilians, civilian objects and essential services during hostilities.
• To strengthen peer-to-peer legal and operational engagement in order to promote compliance, exchange lessons learned and disseminate best practices.
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