IAH continued to cooperate and develop its relationship with organisations in the ‘UN family’ during 2021. We have built on its long-established links with UNESCO to become a partner in UN-Water, the umbrella grouping of all UN agencies which have an interest in water.

UN-related activities of the year were wide and numerous, including:

• Participation in the panel for the UN High-Level meeting on the implementation of the water-related goals and targets of the 2030, to consider how to accelerate action on water and sanitation.
• Input to scoping UN-Water’s Capacity Development Initiative, which aims to help countries identify their water and sanitation capacity gaps and work with national governments to enhance their capacity for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6.
• Participation in the panel for the UN High Level Meeting on the ‘Implementation of the Water-related Goals and Targets of the 2030 Agenda’ and was invited to be a signatory to the UN’s joint statement on water. This supports the midterm review of the implementation of the ‘International Decade for Action, Water for Sustainable Development, 2018–2028’. A video was also prepared for UN Water with support from ECHN.
• Attending the 24th session of the Intergovernmental Council (IGC) of the Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme. This was convened to endorse the Strategic Plan of the Ninth Phase of the IHP (2022-2029) and the revised Statutes and Rules of Procedure.
• Input to the UNECE Groundwater Working Group and to UNESCWA’s consultation on the 2023 Midterm Comprehensive Review of the Water Action Decade. There was input to UN ESCWA’s Groundwater Abstraction Management Guidelines for the Arab Region.

Significant contributions to the preparations for World Water Day 2022, which has the theme ‘Groundwater: making the invisible visible’. Details of such effort will feature in our report for 2022.