Our Work
Faster, more coordinated action on water and sanitation is essential to transforming billions of lives and driving gains across all dimensions of sustainable development.
Yet, the world is moving too slowly towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6): to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030.
As the United Nations’ coordination mechanism on water and sanitation, UN-Water's role is to ensure our Members and Partners ‘deliver as one’ to help countries accelerate progress.
A united vision: The United Nations System-wide Strategy for Water and Sanitation
Through the first-ever United Nations System-wide Strategy for Water and Sanitation, developed by UN-Water and launched in 2024, United Nations entities have committed to uniting their efforts and maximizing the collective strength of the United Nations system in support of Member States.
Born from the momentum of the UN 2023 Water Conference, the Strategy reflects countries’ ambitions to work faster on water and sanitation challenges as a driver for sustainable development, human rights and peace.
Through an implementation plan which comprises a set of Priority Collaborative Actions and Contributing Actions, the Strategy enables more integrated and effective support to accelerate progress towards SDG 6 and other international water-related commitments.
UN-Water’s work on enabling data-driven acceleration and coordination
At the heart of UN-Water’s work is a commitment to impact at both the global, and regional and country levels.
Our country engagement supports United Nations Resident Coordinators (UNRCs) and United Nations Country Teams (UNCTs) to connect to the expertise, technical assistance and initiatives of UN-Water Members and Partners. At the national and regional levels, we also support UNRCs and UNCTs to strengthen coordination and information exchange.
To address capacity gaps, the UN-Water SDG 6 Capacity Development Initiative mobilizes targeted support from the United Nations system and other development partners at various levels of operation.
To support countries in collecting and sharing indicator data on water and sanitation, UN-Water leads the Integrated Monitoring Initiative for SDG 6 (IMI-SDG6), which provides coherent and reliable data on progress through the UN-Water SDG 6 Data Portal.
What We Do
UN-Water focuses on three core areas of work:
- Informing policy processes and addressing emerging issues
- Supporting monitoring and reporting on water and sanitation
- Building knowledge and inspiring people to take action