The fourth and final regional alumni workshop of the ‘Water Integrity Capacity Building Programme for the MENA Region (WI MENA)’ was jointly organised by GWP-Med and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature-Regional Office for Western Asia (IUCN ROWA) in Amman, Jordan, from 17 to 20th October, 2016.
The Workshop, targeting public official, brought together 23 representatives coming from public institutions with the aim of strengthening participant’s capacities and knowledge on issues related to Integrity on integrated water resources management and in promoting the exchange of best practices.
Facilitated by experts from SIWI and GWP-Med, the alumni workshop combined a set of theoretical and practical sessions. Participants had the opportunity to strengthen further their knowledge and exchange on key integrity concepts and how they link with the water sector as well as with cross-cutting issues like gender mainstreaming. They also were initiated to the water governance and finance nexus and the linkages with integrity. A series of lightening talk discussions allowed them to know more about access to information, the anticorruption mechanisms, the digitization of procedures and enhancing dialogue between partners for better networking. Targeted presentations from Jordan and the work of the Environmental Rangers, offered valuable insights on integrity processes on the ground. Furthermore, the workshop offered the participants with the opportunity to present progress of their individual action plans developed during the national training workshops and to exchange with others on how to improve them in order to ensure their implementation.
The Workshop signalled the completion of the set of four regional alumni workshops[1], foreseen within the WI MENA Programme, which is financially supported by Sweden through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and implemented by UNDP Water Governance Facility (WGF) at Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) in close collaboration with regional and national partners, including GWP-Med as the core regional partner. The Programme aims to develop capacities of different water stakeholder groups from five countries (Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia) at different governance levels to improve transparency and accountability practices in water resources management through national and regional activities in close collaboration with regional and local partners.
In addition to capacity building trainings targeting different stakeholder groups (including operational staff, women, civil society and public officials) aiming to improve integrity in water resource management conducted in each country, four regional alumni workshops were part of the workplan targeting selected alumni participants from the five countries and from the same stakeholder group. The main objective is the creation of a regional community of practice on water integrity, fostering water integrity ambassadors and providing a forum for experience sharing between target groups.
[1] Information on the previous alumni workshops can be found respectively at: