How to get corruption as World Water Day theme?

Q: It would be a nice idea to have the theme of the next World Water Day on corruption. As IRC is maintaining the WWD website, I was wondering if you know the right person to contact in this regard.
(Researcher, Germany)

Answer:
(by Dick de Jong, moderator www.worldwaterday.org)

We as NGOs can hardly influence themes of the UN World Water Day, our experience since the start of WWD in 1993 shows. The UN Water people of the 24 agencies involved discuss themes and who takes the lead in the UN system for each year in their closed meetings and workshops. They usually decide on that in the last meeting of the preceding year, but do not make that known to the wider world.

As you can see on our www.worldwaterday.org site they see the forthcoming WWDs as part of the UN International Decade for Action on Water 2005-2015, which was launched on World Water Day - 22 March 2005. The Water for Life Decade 2005-2015 aims to give a high profile to implementing water-related programmes and the participation of women. The UN hopes that the Decade will boost the chances of achieving international water-related goals and the United Nations Millennium Declaration.

Our experience with our Source newsletter shows that the corruption issue is not likely to be raised by any of the UN agencies, as this is not a topic they (or others!) want to profile public attention on. “Governance” as an issue may have a better chance. But this has to be pushed by influential UN officials at HQ and in the field.