Inclusivity and Participation in Water Diplomacy: a Policy Brief

A collective reflection by IHE Delft Young Water Diplomats 2025 Cohort on concrete actions to implement the Kathmandu Declaration on Inclusive Water Cooperation.

In the months following the 7^th annual Water and Peace seminar held in Kathmandu, the 2025 IHE Delft Young Water Diplomats (YWD) led a collective reflection on concrete steps to strengthen inclusivity and participation in the water cooperation space. Building on the momentum of the Kathmandu Declaration on Inclusive Water Diplomacy, the cohort prepared a policy brief that offers actionable recommendations for policymakers in the water sector.

The 2025 YWDs comprise a group of 18 emerging leaders from 14 countries across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe with diverse academic, professional, and lived experiences from the water sector, but also international relations, diplomacy, conflict resolution and governance. The policy brief is the result of reflections from the Water and Peace seminar in Kathmandu, developed jointly after a series of self-organised online consultations and multiple iterations to ensure a fair, equitable and meaningful representation of views, perspectives, and lived experiences of the cohort.

The document draws from a wide array of best practices and lessons learned from diverse themes and geographies, including basins such as Lake Titicaca, the Nile, Syr Darya, and countries such as Guinea, Liberia, Yemen, Australia and Jordan. The brief focuses on three specific areas for action, identified by the group as the core focal points emerging from the Kathmandu seminar:

• Youth: Institutionalising dedicated youth engagement platforms, creating intergenerational dialogue initiatives; facilitating mentorship and youth participation in decision-making processes; and ensuring sustained financial and technical support to youth-led organisations.
• Women: Enhancing efforts to generate and share gender-disaggregated data; strengthening policy frameworks to ensure women’s equal status; and expanding networking and capacity-building efforts for women.
• Indigenous and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Investing further in local dialogue platforms together with indigenous people; and empowering citizens via TEK-informed community based monitoring.

The authors of the brief conclude that:

Advancing inclusivity in the water sector requires more than rhetorical, political, and diplomatic commitments. The threats to the global consensus on the inclusivity and participation agendas of the 21^st century are unlikely to abate anytime soon. Should policymakers deprioritise this cause, water diplomacy and cooperation interventions will lose sight of the actual needs and aspirations of the communities most affected by their decisions. Those working in this sector should not revert to business-as-usual approaches, and we should avoid a return to technocratic approaches that reinforce the power and position of those who gained it through historical injustices.

Historically, 2025 may be remembered as a turning point in the international system, where we must decide whether to continue struggling for a more plural, diverse, and inclusive world, or to yield to the powerful political and economic actors working to derail our pursuit for a more just and equitable future. The 2025 YWDs see this product as an opportunity to share fresh perspectives and ideas with a broad range of government, civil society, and other stakeholders working to promote inclusivity and transformative changes in water diplomacy and cooperation.

You can download and read the full policy brief here.

The Young Water Diplomats Programme is part of the Cross-Regional Learning for Transformative Water Diplomacy (CroWD) Project funded by the Water and Development Partnership Programme of IHE Delft. 

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