Director's Message- World Water Day 2023

World Water Day – March 22, 2023 marks the 30th anniversary of World Water Day and the opening of the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York, the largest of its kind since the 1977 Mar Del Plata UN gathering. The UN Water Conference will review the progress in the second halves of both the Water Action Decade 2018-2028 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

IWLA - Global Water Law Platform
Our graduate law Academy has more than 50 global Affiliates from around the world, experts in water law and transboundary water cooperation.  Through our collective community-building and convergent pioneering research, the Academy seeks to contribute to improving transboundary water cooperation through its expertise in international, transnational, and national water law.

IWLA Commitment - Transformative change for transboundary water law
Responding to the increased complex challenges that threaten the peaceful and sustainable management of the world’s shared freshwaters, the Academy is committed to devising innovative regulatory water regimes, adapted to meet contemporary challenges. Past progress has established the foundational groundwork – under the auspices of the UN and aligned with the core principles of the UN Charter, two framework instruments – the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention and the 1992 UNECE Transboundary Waters Convention. Together with a choate body of rules of customary and treaty law in this field, transboundary water cooperation continues to emerge, as shown by the UN SDG 6.5.2 reporting. Despite this progress, more needs to be done.  Many transboundary watercourses are not covered by international agreements and many existing agreements require transformative application in the face of changing circumstances.  Water law can and must help.

Game-changer challenge – innovative research, targeted dissemination, and capacity development 

The IWLA commits to actively supporting global engagement in pioneering water-law research, with targeted application and dissemination, making this expertise directly available in relevant domains, in ways that support implementing transboundary water cooperation in the broader context of the UN SDGs. Through the Academy’s network of global Affiliates, graduate water law programme, Emerging Scholars Initiative, and international water law activities, the IWLA takes action to meet its commitments.        

The Danube River

The Academy’s game-changer challenge for World Water Day is to step up the quality of joined-up legal regulatory regimes through increased research, targeted dissemination, and capacity development in water law so that together we can support effective transboundary water cooperation in line with the broader UN Water Action Agenda. Come and join us in this mission.