During World Water Week 2023, SIWI launched the WASHREG portal. WASHREG is a multi-stakeholder approach co-developed by SIWI, UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), and IDB, designed to identify national WASH regulation gaps and challenges, and to develop actions and solutions around regulatory roles and principles. It allows for knowledge exchange amongst WASH regulators around the world.

The portal launch followed several years of gathering experiences around the WASHREG approach, which was implemented with SIWI support in Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Liberia, and Iraq, and includes the development of action plans for regulatory agencies in these countries. Now WASHREG knowledge from around the world is compiled in one place and is publicly available: “There are already a huge number of experiences and solutions on the webpage. This is a big step forward in disseminating knowledge around WASH regulation,” concluded Dr. Laura Vargas, Advisor at SIWI. In the future, the portal will also be made available in Spanish and French.

The portal is part of a set of guidance documents produced under the Accountability for Sustainability partnership between UNICEF, SIWI, and the UNDP-SIWI Water Governance Facility, which aims to increase sustainability of WASH interventions through the improvement of governance in service delivery frameworks.