Women in Water Diplomacy Network After Action Report

In August 2022, the Women in Water Diplomacy Network launched the ‘A Path Forward for Women, Water, Peace and Security’ Global Strategy at the World Water Week.

The Global Strategy is built around Five Strategic Pillars harmonizing prioritized actions across the growing global Network to advance the Network’s overarching objective to improve gender equality in high-level decision making in transboundary basins with focus on women’s leadership in regional dialogues around shared waters – with resultant positive implications for regional peace and human security. 

Strategic Pillar Four aims to ‘contribute to elevating dialogue, knowledge, and experience around the intersecting themes of the Women in Water Diplomacy Network (i.e., women, water, peace and security) as part of basin wide, regional, and global dialogue processes.’ Pillar Four specifically identified the UN Water Conference in New York in March 2023 as a strategic and prioritized milestone for collective Network engagement to tangibly impact the trajectory of water and peace related discourse in transboundary basins globally.

As such, the Network’s engagements at and around the UN Water Conference specifically aimed to:

• Contribute to knowledge and experience around the intersecting themes of women, water, peace, and security at the UN Water Conference in March 2023
• Strengthen the representation and influence of women water diplomats in water and climate global dialogue process
• Contribute to fostering a more inclusive dialogue space by elevating the collective positive visibility of the Women in Water Diplomacy Network
• Engage with, hear from, and support young water professionals with a focus on young women water professionals.

This report summarizes the engagement of the Women in Water Diplomacy Network at the UN 2023 Water Conference, as well the Water Diplomacy Symposium, which was held earlier in March 2023 in the run up to the conference.