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SWA Meets with UN Leaders to Prepare for the UN 2023 Water Conference 

Sanitation and Water for All Secretariat
01 Nov 2022

In the run-up to the UN 2023 Water Conference, SWA Secretariat met with leaders in New York for a series of preparatory meetings designed to secure political will and drive forward the achievement of water and sanitation for all.

Kicking off discussions, SWA CEO Catarina de Albuquerque met with the permanent missions of Egypt, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Senegal, Spain and the United Kingdom. Representatives highlighted key areas of concern in their countries including climate change and increased water scarcity, as well as the need to eliminate inequalities in water and sanitation services.

On 24 October, the SWA Secretariat and many of its partners joined a Stakeholder Consultation organized by the President of the UN General Assembly to discuss the five SDG 6 accelerators. Participants focused on possible “game changers” that could contribute to the Water Action Agenda.   

During the consultation, SWA stressed that the 2023 Conference is an important opportunity to affirm the human rights to water and sanitation, as well as to call for increased accountability and the elimination of inequalities. De Albuquerque also highlighted “political will” as an essential game changer for water and sanitation, as it ensures adequate financing, capacity, data collection and scientific solutions. A summary of the stakeholder dialogue can be found here.   

On 25 October, SWA also participated in a preparatory meeting for the Conference that aimed at finalizing the themes of the five interactive dialogues which will be held at the 2023 Water Conference. Member States and all relevant stakeholders were invited to share their inputs under the guidance of the co-hosts of the Conference: the Republic of Tajikistan and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. One key outcome was the explicit inclusion of the human rights to water and sanitation in the dialogue themes – a key element that SWA and other key partners have long stressed.

Secretariat staff also pledged their commitment to continue to highlight the human face of water and sanitation throughout the Conference – from raising awareness about period poverty to the increasing numbers of climate refugees fleeing water-related disasters, to vulnerable communities dealing with water-borne diseases.

The October consultations and meetings are part of weeks of engagement between the SWA partnership, the event co-hosts, UN-Water, UNDESA and the office of the President of the General Assembly. Throughout these meetings SWA has stressed the following messages:   

  • The human rights to water and sanitation must be front and center at the UN Water Conference.   
  • Conference discussions must recognize that water and sanitation, more concretely 6.1 and 6.2, are central to all aspects of SDG 6 and beyond.   
  • Financing and accountability need to feature in Conference discussions.  
  • A global conference without a solid follow-up plan is a missed opportunity. To that end, SWA plans to drive forward momentum from the conference through its Mutual Accountability Mechanism (MAM).  MAM commitments are a model for SMART voluntary commitments which have been in practice since 2018. Additionally, SWA’s 2023 Finance Ministers’ Meeting could serve as a key follow-up moment to the discussion at the UN Water Conference. 

SWA’s 2023 Conference Task Team will also work diligently to prepare for the conference, contributing to informal working groups, coordinating proposals from partners for side events, as well as leading discussions on accountability and how the SWA Mutual Accountability Mechanism can contribute to the Water Action Agenda.

Additionally, SWA also plans to showcase how multistakeholder commitments transform water and sanitation delivery and how mutual accountability results in concrete actions. This includes political leadership through national compacts endorsed at the Head of State or Head of Government level.