AquaFed’s Commitments to the Water Action Agenda

AquaFed is involved with four commitments through the Water Action Agenda. We are working with the other partners to ensure activity starts quickly, so that we can report progress at the UN High Level Political Forum in July and the SDG summit in September.

AquaFed registered an individual commitment based on supporting the human right to water and sanitation. There are two objectives:

• To explain the role of private operators and explain how PPPs work, to countries on the SWA Priority List (these are countries with governments proactive on accelerating their SDG6-related national goals)
• To work closely with UN OCHCR to support initiatives such as the Business Forum on Human Rights and the UN OCHCR Roadmap for UN Water.

We also have three joint commitments:

1. World Water and Sanitation Workforce Initiative: This is with Josh’s Water Jobs IWA, International Labour Organisation, Water Aid, GIZ and others and is focused on how to attract, educate, train, protect and retain water and sanitation professionals.

2. Strengthening laws to uphold the human right to water and sanitation: This is coordinated by HumanRight2Water.Org. It aims to encourage accountability and provide roadmaps for integrating human rights indicators into monitoring systems at local levels, thus providing information on the needs of vulnerable people.

3. Accelerating gender action: This is led by UNESCO and is based on three main pillars:

• An in-depth analysis document ‘Taking Stock of the Progress towards Gender Equality in the Water Domain - Where do we stand 25 years after the Beijing Declaration?’
• Concrete recommendations for action contained in a joint Position Paper ‘Accelerating Gender Equality in the Water Domain – A Call For Action’
• Awareness and Dissemination: Spreading the word on the Initiative, its key findings and recommendations.