Priority Collaborative Actions to the United Nations System-wide Strategy for Water and Sanitation

To enhance coordination within the UN system to ensure consistency, impact, and alignment of communications on water and sanitation, and to elevate these issues by strengthening leadership, engagement and messaging.

Four year outlook "2025-2028":

• Strengthening UN system-wide processes for coordinated communication.  
• Advocating for water and sanitation as a strategic leadership priority.  
• Monitoring and evaluating communications outcomes to strengthen impact. 

To set the course for the UN system’s support for water and sanitation in the post-2030 agenda through technical advice and data, and through advocacy by UN-Water Principals and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Water.

Four year outlook "2025-2028":

• Engaging with high-level events and processes, including the High-level Political Fora on Sustainable Development, and UN Water Conferences in 2026 and 2028.
• Contributing to the assessment of the Water Action Decade and follow-up to the Pact for the Future.
• Providing a comprehensive body of evidence on water and sanitation to inform negotiations on a possible post-2030 agenda. 

To empower UN Country Teams (UNCTs) to leverage the unifying focus of SDG 6 in their systems approach to SDG progress, through joint and complementary programming, to fulfil the needs and ambitions of Member States.

Four year outlook "2025-2028":

• Advancing water and sanitation-related issues as key entry points for SDG acceleration in UN country programming.  
• Leveraging expertise and resources across the UN system to respond to and support countries, with emphasis on the water and sanitation needs of developing countries.  
• Strengthening of country coordination for delivery on water and sanitation priorities. 

To ensure that water and sanitation content are increasingly reflected in the outcome documents and proceedings of Meetings of the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) of the Rio Conventions and in the related planning and reporting instruments by more countries.

Four year outlook "2025-2028":

• Supporting implementation of existing water and sanitation-related mandates by collaborating with the three Rio Convention secretariats and constituted bodies.
• Supporting the inclusion of water and sanitation considerations in the work programmes and negotiated documents of the three Rio Conventions.
• Providing coordinated UN system support to the Parties to the three Rio Conventions with technical, scientific and policy expertise to integrate water and sanitation in countries’ key planning instruments.
• Enabling and supporting Member States to make best use of the 2026 and 2028 UN Water Conferences, Rio Convention COPs, and High-Level Political Fora on Sustainable Development, among others.

To accelerate progress and transformative change toward SDG 6 through strengthening the evidence base, improving data availability and use, advancing monitoring, using science and innovation, and documenting good practices and lessons learned.

Four year outlook "2025-2028":

• Continuing support to countries and other stakeholders for water and sanitation monitoring and reporting.
• Making data more useful for countries, through increased resolution, disaggregation and contextualisation, and improving availability.  
• Ensuring uptake of evidence into policy at all levels, with a focus on national target setting, use in UN Common Country Assessments and inputs to country processes for planning, policy and investment decision-making. 

To mobilize UN system and stakeholders’ expertise, knowledge, data, policy guidance, and best practices at all levels to elevate the ambition of the UN 2026 and 2028 Water Conferences while leveraging UN-Water’s role and brand.

Four year outlook "2025-2028":

• Supporting the Member State UN Water Conference process.  
• Coordinating the UN System to support the UN Water Conferences.  
• Shaping strategic inputs to the UN Water Conferences in 2026 and 2028 by developing substantive foundation messaging, including for the UN-Water Chair and UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Water.