World Water Week, a leading conference on global water issues, began online on Tuesday. Its theme, "Seeing the Unseen: The Value of Water," holds significant implications in Afghanistan, where wider access to safe drinking water remains a challenge. 

According to a 2021 UN report, only 68.2 percent of Afghanistan's rural population has access to basic drinking water, compared to 94.3 percent of the country's urban population.

In this photo series, residents, mostly children, are spotted getting water from a well in a village in the city of Kandahar. Residents said it's the only well for over 500 families in the surrounding villages. A wealthy local man built the well in 2016. A child said he has to retrieve water from the well four times a day to meet his family's needs.