The ISW at the World Water Forums

The beginning of an adventure
Shortly after its creation in 1990, the ISW and its partners contributed significantly to the creation and launch of the Maghreb-Machrek Alliance for Water in 1995. This project initiated and coordinated by Hourai Tazi Sadeq helped bring together some of the key stakeholders in water management from around the Mediterranean. Our objectives were: to provide access to water and sanitation, to share knowledge, to bring down barriers between approaches and to build solidarity amongst peoples and cultures.

Based on this emerging movement and the results of our Mediterranean workshop in Casablanca (1996) under the theme “Water, Citizenship and Culture: what is the role of civil society?”, we participated in the 1st Word Water Forum in Marrakech in 1997. We also took the opportunity to build a bridge between the specialists from around the world and the general population to share the content of the forum.
The symbol of this attempt at democratising knowledge was represented by around fifty kites flown by young Moroccan school children throughout the Forum.

Which continues today
It was for the 2nd World Water Forum in The Hague in 2000 that we built the first Citizens’ House for Water and designed an open and accessible programme. We were determined from the outset that the design and set up of the “Citizens’ House for Water” would be the result of a competition jointly organised with students and their teachers from a local architecture school. This then became a tradition for the Citizens’ Houses for Water at Kyoto, Mexico and Istanbul.

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