Background
To begin the preparatory process for the 2026 United Nations Water Conference, and as mandated in A/RES/78/327, an organizational session will be held to "make updated recommendations to the General Assembly on the themes of the interactive dialogues".
The organizational session will be held on 3 March 2025 in the ECOSOC Chamber, at the UNHQ in New York from 10:00-13:00 and 15:00-18:00.
The programme is now available on the "documentation" tab.
The organizational session will be webcast on UNWebTV.
Member States
Stakeholders
Participation of Member States/Observers/UN entities
The session will be held on 3rd March 2025, at the UNHQ in New York, in the ECOSOC Chamber, from 10AM – 1PM and from 3PM – 6PM and conducted as an informal meeting of the UN General Assembly.
The meeting will be open to representatives of Member States, Observers and UN Entities with valid UN Grounds passes to access the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Staff of Ministries and government agencies who intend to participate in the Organizational Session in person should contact their country’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, to be included in their national delegation to the event. The missions will arrange for the appropriate action for access badges to the UN premises.
Registration for official meetings at UN Headquarters for the purpose of issuing grounds passes is processed by the UN Protocol and Liaison Service via the online system “eRegistration” available through the eDelegate Portal at https://edelegate.un.int. Authorized users of the permanent missions may follow the “eRegistration” guidelines, which can be found at https://www.un.org/dgacm/en/content/protocol/meetings , to submit requests for registration of members of delegations to temporary meeting.
There will be no pre-established list of speakers for the organizational session. Delegations are requested to focus their interventions on their recommendations for the themes of the six interactive dialogues for the 2026 Conference. As a reminder, the five themes of the 2023 UN Water Conference interactive dialogues were:
- Water for Health: Access to WASH, including the Human Rights to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation;
- Water for Sustainable Development: Valuing Water, Water-Energy-Food Nexus, and Sustainable Economic and Urban Development;
- Water for Climate, Resilience and Environment: Source to Sea, Biodiversity, Climate, Resilience, and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR);
- Water for Cooperation: Transboundary and International Water Cooperation, Cross Sectoral Cooperation, including Scientific Cooperation, and Water Across the 2030 Agenda
- Water Action Decade: Accelerating the Implementation of the Objectives of the Decade, including through the UN Secretary-General’s Action Plan.
Participation of Representatives from non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders
Representatives of non-governmental organizations in consultative status with ECOSOC and of the major groups and other relevant stakeholders in possession of valid UN grounds passes to access the UNHQ in New York will be able to attend the event.
Time permitting, representatives from non-governmental organizations in consultative status with ECOSOC will be invited to make short oral statements on the main theme of the organizational session in person at the UNHQ in New York.
Deadline for registering interest was 24 February 2025. Only selected potential speakers will be contacted by the Secretariat.
Other stakeholders will be able to view the proceedings virtually at the UN Web TV.
There will be opportunities for all stakeholders to submit inputs to inform the selection of Interactive Dialogue themes. Information will be available here: https://sdgs.un.org/conferences/water2026/stakeholders
