Beat the Heat: How UNICEF Helps Children Survive Extreme Heatwaves Across the Middle East
For millions of children surviving a heatwave is far more difficult.
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- العربية
Every summer, temperatures across the Middle East climb to dangerous levels. For many families, staying cool means turning on the air conditioner, drinking cold water, and spending time indoors. But for millions of children living through conflict, displacement, and climate emergencies, surviving a heatwave is far more difficult.
Across places including Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, and Syria, damaged water infrastructure, displacement, and limited access to clean drinking water leave children especially vulnerable to extreme heat. As climate change continues to intensify, heatwaves are becoming longer, more frequent, and more severe, placing millions of children's health and lives at risk.
Heatwaves and Conflict Create a Dangerous Combination
Extreme heat does not occur in isolation. Across the Middle East, millions of children are already living through humanitarian crises in which access to safe water and sanitation has been severely disrupted. In conflict-affected areas such as Gaza and Sudan, water networks may be damaged or rendered non-operational, forcing families to depend on unsafe water sources or travel long distances in extreme temperatures to collect water.
These conditions place children at even greater risk of dehydration and disease. Children living in conflict are almost 20 times more likely to die from diarrheal diseases linked to unsafe water and sanitation than from violence itself, showing how the breakdown of essential water systems can become one of the most dangerous consequences of humanitarian crises.
How UNICEF Helps Children Beat the Heat
Even in the world’s most challenging humanitarian settings, UNICEF teams work with local partners to help children and families access safe water, sanitation and essential health services. Across the Middle East and North Africa and beyond, UNICEF’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programmes protect children before, during and after extreme heat events by delivering emergency drinking water, supporting water treatment facilities, repairing damaged networks and developing sustainable systems that can serve communities over the long term.
Where safe water systems are unavailable, UNICEF provides water purification tablets and household treatment supplies to make available water safer to drink. Families also receive hygiene kits include soap, water containers and other essential items that help them store water safely and reduce the spread of disease.
At the same time, UNICEF invests in climate-resilient infrastructure, including solar-powered water systems, boreholes and sustainable water networks designed to withstand increasingly frequent climate shocks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Children heat up faster than adults, become dehydrated more quickly, and may not recognize when they need to drink water. These factors make them more vulnerable to heat exhaustion, heatstroke, and dehydration.
UNICEF provides safe drinking water, water purification tablets, hygiene kits, emergency WASH services, vaccinations, and climate-resilient water systems that help communities cope with extreme heat and water shortages.
Clean water prevents dehydration while reducing the risk of waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, and hepatitis A, all of which become even more dangerous during heatwaves.
WASH stands for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene. UNICEF's WASH programmes improve access to safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, hygiene education, and emergency water services to help protect children's health worldwide.
Children living in conflict-affected settings such as Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, and Syria face particularly high risks due to damaged water infrastructure, displacement, and limited access to safe drinking water.