On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Platform for International Water Law, Geneva Water Hub, Faculty of Law, University of Geneva, the Water Convention is partnering in a conference entitled ‘The implementation of international water law: global, regional and basin perspectives’.

Held back-to-back with the meeting of the Water Convention’s Implementation Committee on 2-3 December 2019, staff from the Convention Secretariat, including the Secretary to the Convention, and members of the Convention’s Implementation Committee, will be presenting at the Conference.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses (the
UN Watercourses Convention) and the UNECE Convention on the Protection and Use of
Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (the UNECE Water Convention) play a key
role in assisting States for adopting and implementing legal instruments at the regional and basin
levels. The importance of these two instruments for water diplomacy and cooperation was
emphasised in the debates held at the UN Security Council in 2016 where many countries referred
to these two main agreements of international water law. In its report “A Matter of Survival”, the
Global High-Level Panel on Water and Peace recommended their ratification and implementation.

The Agenda 2030 and its SDG 6 on water and sanitation aim to promote Integrated Water Resources
Management and transboundary cooperation. Moreover, in this context, detailed indicators have
been developed to monitor the achievement of SDG 6 as well as the implementation of freshwater
legal instruments.

The conference on ‘The implementation of international water law: global, regional and basin
Perspectives’ will include three panels. The first panel will address the role of universal freshwater
agreements in water diplomacy. The second panel will examine the role of basin mechanisms in
ensuring the sound implementation of freshwater legal instruments. The third panel will assess how
other areas of international law, such as international environmental law and human rights law, can
assist with the implementation of international water law.

A detailed programme for the event is contained in the flyer available here.

For registration, please send a message to [email protected] by 1 December 2019.