Escalating Conflicts, Civilian Harm, and Changing Warfare - Reflections from 25+ years in the field
After more than twenty-five years designing and delivering WASH programmes in some of the world’s most complex crises — from the Northern Sri Lanka conflict, Rohingya response in Bangladesh and the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia to Gaza, South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Northern Syria — I have watched the nature of conflict change in ways that keep me awake at night.
Today we are living through a level of armed conflict not seen since the Second World War. The number, intensity, and geographic spread of crises have grown relentlessly. Sudan, the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Lebanon, Myanmar, Haiti, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, and the growing risks in South Sudan and the Sahel are not isolated emergencies. They form a connected landscape of violence that is systematically destroying civilian life and the systems that sustain it.
Civilians Are No Longer on the Sidelines
In every major response I have coordinated, the pattern is the same: civilians are not collateral damage — they are the primary target or the inevitable victims. Hospitals are hit. Water systems are deliberately damaged. Aid workers are killed or detained. Sexual violence is used as a weapon. Displacement is no longer temporary; entire generations are growing up without the prospect of return.
I saw this clearly in Tigray and Amhara, where conflict and cholera collided. I saw it again in Gaza and the West Bank, where water and sanitation infrastructure became strategic targets. I saw it in South Sudan during successive displacement and cholera waves, and in Afghanistan as the political ground shifted overnight under our feet. Across these contexts, more than 117 million people are now forcibly displaced by conflict and violence. The numbers are not abstract. They are the families I have sat with in camps, the children whose water points I helped restore, and the local partners whose clinics were forced to close.
International humanitarian law, which should protect those who are not fighting, is being disregarded with growing impunity. When health facilities are attacked and medical staff are killed while trying to save lives, the message is clear: the rules that once constrained warfare are eroding.
Drones Have Redrawn the Map of Danger
One of the most profound shifts I have witnessed in recent years is the rapid spread of drones. What was once the preserve of advanced militaries is now available to a wide range of armed actors. The effect has been transformative — and deeply dangerous for both civilians and humanitarians.
Drones extend violence far beyond traditional frontlines. They make attacks more frequent, more precise, and harder to predict. Markets, clinics, displacement sites, and aid distribution points that once felt relatively secure are now within reach. In several of the responses I have led or supported, drone incidents affecting humanitarian operations have multiplied. Danger is no longer confined to the front line. It is constant, diffuse, and increasingly unpredictable.
This changes everything about how we plan, move, and deliver. Remote management, once a pragmatic solution in places like Northern Syria, is becoming a necessity in more and more contexts. Local partners, who often carry the greatest risk, need stronger protection, better equipment, and genuine decision-making power — not just the residual tasks that international organisations find too dangerous.
Aid Workers Are Paying the Price
The humanitarians trying to respond are themselves under extraordinary pressure. Hundreds of aid workers have been killed in recent years. Detention of staff has risen sharply. In my own career, I have managed teams through Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, coordinated under fire in Ethiopia, and supported responses where access was systematically blocked or conditioned.
When security risks rise, and funding falls at the same time, the result is predictable: fewer staff in the field, reduced presence, and greater reliance on already overstretched local organisations. The space for principled humanitarian action is shrinking. Administrative obstacles, political interference, and direct threats compound the danger. Every time a health facility closes or a water system cannot be repaired because it is too dangerous to reach, civilians pay the price.
What This Demands of Us
These trends — more conflicts, greater civilian harm, new technologies of violence, and rising risks for those who try to help — are occurring against a backdrop of historic funding cuts. The combination is forcing the humanitarian system into painful prioritisation. Millions of people who need assistance may receive little or none.
After twenty-five years, I remain convinced of one thing: technical excellence in WASH or any other sector is not enough if the people we serve are killed or displaced the next day. We need stronger political action to protect civilians and uphold international humanitarian law. We need practical adaptation — better analysis of drone threats, genuine localisation that transfers real power and resources, and sustained investment in the local responders who stay when international staff are evacuated.
The current moment is defined by brutality, impunity, and indifference. Yet it is also a moment that demands clarity. The scale of civilian suffering we are witnessing is not inevitable. It is the result of choices — by parties to conflict, by those who arm them, and by an international community that too often looks away.
Those of us who have spent our careers in this work will continue to deliver what we can, under increasingly difficult conditions. But the deeper solution lies in reducing the violence itself, protecting those caught in it, and restoring the principle that even in war, some things must remain forbidden.
The people living through these conflicts deserve nothing less.
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