UN-Water’s history is part of a long tradition of collaboration between UN entities. These are some of the milestones from our backstory:
1977: The UN’s Intersecretariat Group for Water Resources coordinates UN activities on water and has a three-person secretariat in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ (UN-DESA) predecessor in New York.
1992: The Group is subsumed into the UN Administrative Coordination Committee’s (ACC) Subcommittee on Water Resources, which functions for several years before being disbanded. Members continued to meet informally to continue collaborating around water issues.
1993: The UN General Assembly designates 22 March as World Water Day.
2003: UN-Water is established, endorsed by the successor to the ACC: the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination.
2005-2015: UN-Water coordinates the ‘Water for Life’ International Decade for Action, culminating in the Sanitation Drive to 2015, a campaign to meet the 2000-2015 Millennium Development Goals’ sanitation target and end open defecation.
2012: The Key Water Indicator Portal is launched, backed by a federated database containing data from several UN agencies.
2013: The UN General Assembly designates 19 November as World Toilet Day.
2014: UN-Water launches its 2014-2020 Strategy in support of the 2030 Agenda.
2015: The 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals are launched and a dedicated goal on water and sanitation is adopted by the UN General Assembly with input from UN-Water’s Technical Advice.
2015: The Integrated Water Monitoring initiative is launched with the aim of reporting on progress on water and sanitation in a coherent and coordinated way.