THE WOMEN IN WATER DIPLOMACY SECOND GLOBAL NETWORK FORUM
The Women in Water Diplomacy Second Global Network Forum was held in Vienna, Austria from March 4-7, 2024. The second Global Network Forum was organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Central Asia Regional Environmental Centre (CAREC). The event brought together Network members from the Nile Basin, Central Asia-Afghanistan, Southern African basins including the Zambezi, Orange-Senqu, Okavango, as well as shared basins across the Americas. The second Global Network Forum was to take stock of Network’s developments and priorities with strong focus on advancing the Global Strategy’s prioritized activities, enable joint learning and discussions between Network members and supporters, enable inter-basin exchange and learning, and collectively mark International Women’s Day 2024.
The first two days gave an opportunity for joint learning and discussions between Network members. On March 6, the International Women’s Day Water Diplomacy Symposium was held. The Head of International Communications Division of SIC ICWC, Oygul Usmanova participated online in the panel discussion on “Investing in women water diplomats”. She underlined that women are still well underrepresented in the water sector in Central Asia, pointed to the main barriers that we face when it comes to raising the role of women in water management and the society as a whole, and focused on the need to build capacities of women professionals so that they could engage in water decision making on equal footing with men.
The last day of the Forum was dedicated to OSCE, which is headquartered in Vienna. During a moderated interactive panel “Addressing inclusive water governance” the participants reflected on how does participatory inclusive approach contribute to building sustainable water management in the context of climate change and what organizations and institutions like OSCE should focus on, when it comes to fostering inclusivity in water-related decision-making and processes.
The Head of International Communications Division of SIC ICWC spoke online on activities of undertaken by SIC as part of its commitment made on the occasion of the UN Water Conference in 2023 to work closely with the Central Asian countries and other partners to advance evidence-based transboundary water cooperation. In particular, she showed examples of enhancement of the CAWater-Info portal, its information system and knowledge base to make them more accessible, easy to use and add visual context for wider audience and experts, of development of partnerships at expert level, and of stakeholder mapping that form a part of inclusive water governance in transboundary context in the Aral Sea Basin.
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