“Bringing the water is not a simple task,” says Mariam Bakaule of the mountaintop village of Jarso in southwest Ethiopia.. “This is the essence of women. Water and woman are synonymous here.”

Photographer Mustafah Abdulaziz currently lives in Berlin and shares these images focused on global water scarcity with Ignant. Abdulaziz was born in New York City in 1986 and worked as the first contract photographer for The Wall Street Journal. In August 2014 MilkMade.com asked Mustafah Abdulaziz 10 questions, with an emphasis on his ‘Water’ project.

Globally, fetching water is primarily women’s work. Water.org writes:

Glass ceilings aside, millions of women are prohibited from accomplishing little more than survival. Not because of a lack of ambition, or ability, but because of a lack of safe water and adequate sanitation. Millions of women and children in the developing world spend untold hours daily, collecting water from distant, often polluted sources, then return to their villages carrying their filled 40 pound jerry cans on their backs.

An estimated 200 million hours are spent each day collecting water.

The project ‘Water’ spans water issues in 32 countries, with support from the UN, Water Aid, VSCO and others. These images focus on the scarcity of water in Ethiopia and Pakistan.

Women and young girls are responsible for the collection of water, four times a day, often at distances requiring them to trek across mountains in the morning dark and twilight.Women of Tharpakar in the southern Sindh Province of Pakistan work together to pull water from a well. Even when one person is done, they all remain at the well to share in the task.

After reaching the dry riverbed, women must spend time scratching the dirt until brackish water appears, scoop it into their containers and carry the 20 kilograms back up the mountain.Although Uchiya Nallo, 29, is eight months pregnant and spends half of her day climbing up a mountain side carrying 20 litres of water (approximately 20kg, the average weight allowance for a suitcase when flying), she is still worrying about preparing beer for visiting guests after she’s given birth.A grandmother comforts her great-grand child as he suffers from diarrhea, caused by the unsafe drinking water in the town of Thatta. Diarrhea is one of the leading causes of child mortality worldwide.A woman who recently gave birth to a daughter clings to life while men from her village hike 16 kilometers from the nearest medical center to her village in the mountains. She gave birth to a girl.Children pause during their journey for water, huddling against the wind in the desert of the southern Sindh province, where the 2011 earthquake left the land flooded and soaked in salt. Agriculture in the region has been devastated.Fishermen mend a net in Tharpakar, southern Pakistan, awaiting the tide and their turn to take the boats out and fish for their village.A rainwater harvesting site lays empty after months of no rain in the southern Sindh Province of Pakistan. These large installations allow water to accumulate for villages to use for consumption.Like Ethiopia, the burden of water collection falls on women and children. Their journeys across parched landscapes are a reality that dominates their lives, time and health.A dry riverbed in the southern Konso Region of Ethiopia.via