Recommend to Friend   Liquid treasure: The challenge of
providing drinking water in a new refugee camp  News Stories, 04
July 2013  Treated with chemicals in big onion-shaped tanks, the
brown lake water comes out clear, clean and ready to drink and
cook with after an 11-hour cycle. UNHCR's Barka Mahamat Barka
shows the difference.© UNHCR/R.Schoeffl   AB GADAM, Chad, UNHCR
– Many people like to have a glass of water beside their bed in
case they get thirsty in the middle of the night. Zenab keeps a
jerry can full of the precious fluid. "That's our emergency
ration," she explained to UNHCR.  The mother of five is a
refugee from Sudan's troubled West Darfur region and she lives
in a camp in a semi-arid area of south-east Chad, where clean
water is a luxury rather than a bountiful resource. Ensuring
that all 14,000 refugees in the newly opened Ab Gadam camp get
sufficient water to drink and cook with is a major challenge.
The recommended minimum in an emergency situation is 15 litres
per person per day, but in A