One in four people lack access to safe drinking water: UN

An Afghan Hazara boy drinks water from a tap in Qavariyak village in Shibar district of Bamiyan province on June 18, 2025.[AFP]

More than two billion people worldwide still lack access to safely-managed drinking water, the United Nations said Tuesday, warning that progress towards universal coverage was moving nowhere near quickly enough.

The UN's health and children's agencies said a full one in four people globally were without access to safely-managed drinking water last year, with over 100 million people remaining reliant on drinking surface water -- for example from rivers, ponds and canals.