7 million Iraqis are threatened with deprivation of water, and Iran robs 20% of the country's water

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[size=52]7 million Iraqis are threatened with deprivation of water, and Iran robs 20% of the country's water resources[/size]

[size=45]An Iraqi government official said, that the water stock in Iraq has decreased by half compared to 2021 due to the lack of rainfall and the decrease in river imports from neighboring countries.[/size]
[size=45]Oil and gas-rich Iraq is one of the five countries in the world most affected by climate change and prone to desertification, and water is a major issue in this semi-desert country of 41 million people.[/size]
[size=45]Aoun Diab, Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Water Resources, said, "The available water storage is currently less than what we had last year by about 50%, due to the lack of rain and the few imports from neighboring countries."[/size]
[size=45]Iraq shares its waters, which it obtains from several rivers, especially the Tigris and Euphrates, with Turkey and Syria as well as Iran. According to Baghdad, the construction of dams by its neighbors on the source water reduces its flow when it reaches Iraq.[/size]
[size=45]Diab also referred to “the successive drought years: 2020, 2021 and 2022. All of this had a strong impact on the situation in Iraq.”[/size]
[size=45]He continued, "This certainly gives us a warning about how to use water during the coming summer and during the winter season, and we have taken into account these factors, and are planning according to these data for the agricultural season."[/size]
[size=45]In mid-April, Diab had expressed confidence that the current quantities of water were sufficient to meet the country's needs.[/size]
[size=45]Drought and water shortages have already forced Iraq to halve cultivated areas for the 2021-2022 winter season.[/size]
[size=45]Drought forces Iraq to abandon the cultivation of strategic agricultural crops[/size]
[size=45]The World Bank has estimated that in the absence of appropriate policies, Iraq could see a 20% decrease in available fresh water resources by 2050.[/size]
[size=45]In a country where infrastructure has been devastated by frequent wars and where post-war reconstruction with ISIS is slowing, the bank said, it would be necessary to allocate $180 billion over 20 years to build new infrastructure, dams and develop irrigation projects.[/size]
[size=45]But in 2018, the budget of the Ministry of Water Resources represented less than 0.2% of the total budget, with a value of $15 million, the World Bank said last November.[/size]
[size=45]For his part, the Iraqi Minister of Water Resources, Mahdi Al-Hamdani, says that the water stock in Iraq has decreased by half compared to 2021, noting that Iranian projects deprive the country of 20% of its water resources, and will thus cause great destruction in Iraq.[/size]
[size=45]An Iraqi woman in her drought-scarred land[/size]
[size=45]Al-Hamdani explained that Iran has cut off more than 90% of its shared water tributaries with Iraq and diverted its courses, pointing out that it has not yet taken the initiative to cooperate with Iraq to share the damage in cases of drought.[/size]
[size=45]Al-Hamdani added that there are intensive meetings with the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prepare the file of internationalizing the water issue with Iran, for violating the “United Nations Framework Convention on Non-Navigational Transboundary Rivers for the year 1997,” according to previous statements by the spokesman for the Ministry of Water Resources, Aoun Diab.[/size]
[size=45]Iran is also suffering from a severe drought. This year, the capital, Tehran, experienced the worst drought in half a century, with a drop in rainfall of 97 percent.[/size]
[size=45]In August, several NGOs warned that 7 million people are at risk of being deprived of water due to lack of access to rivers or due to drought.[/size]
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