Conference on “Water Diplomacy: Building Bridges for Lasting Peace”

9:30 to 13:00 World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Kruzel Hall Avenue de la Paix 7bis, Geneva. (Access map)

November, 9th 2018

9:30 am

Zurich (+01:00)

Impact

Impact

This event contributions included:

Presentations abstracts

Download

Mara Tignino (Geneva Water Hub) on-line and slide presentation below.

Download

Atila Uras (UN Environment) on line and slide presentation below.

Download

Yuri Jain (Isha Foundation) presentation.

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Ahmed Haj Asaad (Graduate Institute of International and development studies) slide presentation

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Erika Weinthal (Duke University) slide presentation

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The Geneva Water Hub is pleased to invite you to a Conference on "Water Diplomacy: Building Bridges for Lasting Peace". This Conference is taking place in the context of the Geneva Peace Week.

The Conference will cover the multiple challenges of the nexus between water, peace and security both from the science, legal and governance standpoint. It will include two segments:

Threatened critical water infrastructure and peacebuilding;
Transboundary water cooperation and local governance mechanisms.

The objectives of the Conference will be twofold:

To discuss the opportunities of water as a resource for peacebuilding;
To address good practices of water management mechanisms to prevent tensions at the local and international levels.

The event organizers include: The Geneva Water Hub/University of Geneva, UN Environment, GeoExpertise - Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and Rally for Rivers.

The Conference programme and poster are available below:

Speakers include:

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Mr Danilo Türk

Former President of Slovenia and Geneva Water Hub Lead Political Advisor

Danilo Türk is a Slovenian diplomat, professor of international law, human rights expert, and political figure.

He was the first Slovene ambassador to the United Nations, from 1992 to 2000, and was the UN Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs from 2000 to 2005. He is a visiting professor of international law at Columbia University in New York City, a professor emeritus at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana, and non-resident senior fellow of Chongyang Institute for Financial studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing. He is the founder of the Danilo Türk Foundation, devoted mostly to the rehabilitation of child victims of armed conflict. He was also Chair of the Global High Level Panel on Water and Peace between 2015 and 2017.

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Mr Mahir Aliyev

Coordinator of the UN Environment Programme for the European region

Mr. Aliyev held different posts in UN entities, working in the field of environmental resource management and international environmental governance.

During 2000–2009, Mr. Aliyev managed a number of large projects under the Montreal Protocol programme, Climate Change and International Waters. He has led UN missions and coordinated implementation of large environmental projects in over 30 countries of Eastern Europe, Africa, and Middle East. Mr. Aliyev supervised and implemented large environmental projects, such as: Lake Chad Basin, Niger River Basin, Agulhas and Somali Large Marine Ecosystem, Caspian Sea, Dnieper River Basin and others. Mr. Aliyev heads the interim Secretariat of the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea (Tehran Convention), as well as the Coordination Unit of the Environment and Security (ENVSEC) Initiative. Mahir Aliyev holds a Master’s Degree in Environmental Resource Management from Western University in Baku, Azerbaijan and a Postgraduate Degree in Environmental Diplomacy from the University of Geneva.

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Mr Ahmed Haj Asaad

Scientific collaborator at the Graduate Institute of International and development studies

Ahmed Haj Asaad is currently completing a PhD at the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, University of Lausanne (UNIL), Switzerland.

He holds an engineering degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Aleppo, Syria and post-graduate diplomas in Development Studies, Human Ecology and geomatics from the University of Geneva. His doctoral research focuses on water management as a tool for post-conflict peace-building and reconciliation. He co-founded the Geo Expertise association.

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Mr Aleš Bizjak

International Cooperation Officer for the Slovenian Water Agency

Aleš Bizjak holds B.Sc. in Landscape Planning, M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences and Policy, and Ph. D. in Civil Engineering.

He has 15 years of experience in the implementation of the integrated water resources management and EU water policy on national, bilateral and international levels, both as a member of official bodies or as an expert. He is actively involved in work of several international platforms, e.g. UNECE, UNEP, UfM, OECD, ICPDR, and ISRBC. His international activities are focused on development of IWRM, inclusive participatory planning, hydro-diplomacy and nexus assessments on all levels. He participates in EU co-financed IWRM projects, either as a lead partner or as a project partner. Consequently, up to the present he was involved in projects and solutions in more than 20 EU and other countries. Aleš Bizjak is also an Assistant Professor at Higher School for Sustainable Development – Environmental Protection in Kranj, Slovenia, for the subject Integrated Water Management.

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Mr Christian Bréthaut

Professor at University of Geneva's Institute for Environemental Sciences and leader of the Research and Education component of the Geneva Water Hub

He holds a PhD in Geosciences and Environment from the University of Lausanne and his area of expertise is the analysis of water policies and the issues associated with the management of cross border rivers.

Mr. Bréthaut’s particular focus within the domain of water management is the capacity of institutions to adapt, the water-food-energy-ecosystems Nexus and the exploration of the link between science and policy.

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Mr Lucius Caflisch

Emeritus Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva)

Lucius Caflisch is a member of Institute of International Law.

He was Legal Adviser to the Swiss Federal Department of External Relations, Berne (1991-1998); judge of the European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg (1998-2006) and member of the International Law Commission of the United Nations (2006-2016). His main areas of interest include international boundaries; law of the sea; law of international watercourses; protection of foreign investments; law of treaties; peaceful settlement of international disputes.

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Mr Yuri Jain

Full time volunteer at Isha Foundation handling the social out-reach activities in the areas of environment, education and health

Prior to this role, Yuri was the Global Vice President at Unilever plc, one of the world's largest consumer good companies.

In that role, Yuri was responsible for building from scratch what is now the world's largest safe drinking water intervention aimed primarily at the needy. Yuri built this global initiative with the central purpose of creating a scalable and sustainable way of protecting human lives with safe drinking water. Spread over various continents, this initiative has protected over 80 million people, making the water purifier brand 'Pureit' the world's largest selling drinking water purifier. Yuri was profiled in the Harvard Business Review (2012) as one of four leading catalysts in global innovation. In 2014, CNN-IBN created its 'Innovating for a better tomorrow' series in which it featured the Pureit initiative as one of the 14 most transformational efforts in India in recent decades. Pureit was awarded the UK government's first innovation award 'iaward' (2009), and has won a range of other innovation awards including the Golden Peacock innovation award four times. Harvard Business School has also done a case study on Pureit (2011). Yuri is an engineer from IIT Delhi, and a post-graduate from IIM Ahmedabad. He is married, and has two children.

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Mr Attila Tanzi

Chair of International Law at the University of Bologna

He is visiting professor Université Paris II, Panthéon Assas (2018) and visiting professor Queen Mary University of London (2014-2016).

Chairman of the Implementation Committee of the UNECE 1992 Water Convention. A Member of the PCA, a Member of the PCA specialised list of arbitrators for environmental disputes, a Conciliator at the OSCE Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. Counsel or arbitrator in various inter-state and investment arbitrations. He is instructed by governments and international organisations on international law issues. He has published extensively in English, Spanish, French and Italian on State responsibility, foreign investment law, environmental law, law of the sea, law of international organisations and jurisdictional immunities.

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Mrs Mara Tignino

Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of the Platform for International Water Law/Geneva Water Hub

She holds a PhD in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies of Geneva and has been a Visiting Scholar at George Washington University School of Law in Washington DC.

She is the author of the monographs "Water During and After Armed Conflicts: What Protection in International Law?" (Brill, 2016) et “L’eau et la guerre. Éléments pour un régime juridique” (Bruylant, 2011) and co-editor of the books “Public Participation and Water Resources Management: Where Do We Stand in International Law?" (UNESCO-IHP, 2015) and the “Research Collection on International Water Law” (Edward Elgar, 2015). In 2017, she won the prize "Women Peacebuilders for Water" from "Fondazione Milano per Expo" for her research in international water law and her dedication to the creation of new generations of international lawyers.

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Mr Atila Uras

Sudan Country Programme Manager for UN Environment

He is UN Environment’s Sudan Country Programme Manager since July 2017, supervising the country team in assisting the people of Sudan to achieve peace, recovery and development on an environmentally sustainable basis.

He has more than 20 years of experience on programme/project management, environmental governance, policy making, sustainable development, climate change adaptation, integrated coastal zone management and nature conservation, grants management, team leadership, monitoring and evaluation; and the civil society/government/private sector relations at national and international levels.

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Mrs Leila Urekenova

Programme Analyst at the UN Environment’s Europe Office

She coordinates the work of the Geneva Science-Policy Platform on Environment and Security, a forum which brings together scientists and policymakers in search of innovative solutions to address the environment and security nexus, and use environmental cooperation as a tool for peacebuilding.

Leila graduated from the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO-University) with a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations. She went on to complete her Master’s and PhD degrees in International Law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Leila has contributed to a number of academic fora on various aspects of international law, environmental governance, and conflict resolution.

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Mrs Erika Weinthal

Professor of Environmental Policy, Duke University

Erika Weinthal is the Lee Hill Snowdon Professor of Environmental Policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.

Dr. Weinthal received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. She specializes in global environmental politics with an emphasis on water and energy. Her book -- State Making and Environmental Cooperation: Linking Domestic Politics and International Politics in Central Asia (MIT Press 2002) -- was the recipient of the 2003 Chadwick Alger Prize and the 2003 Lynton Keith Caldwell Prize. She has co-authored Oil is not a Curse (Cambridge University Press 2010) and co-edited Water and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (Earthscan Press, 2014) and The Oxford Handbook on Water Politics and Policy (Oxford University Press 2018). She is a co-editor of Global Environmental Politics and a founding member of the Environmental Peacebuilding Assocation. In 2017 she was a recipient of the Women Peacebuilders for Water Award under the auspices of “Fondazione Milano per Expo 2015”.

With the support of: