“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.