The eleventh meeting of the Working Group on Monitoring and Assessment as well as the fifth meeting of the Working Group on Integrated Water Resources Management, will take place back-to-back in Geneva in the Palais des Nations on 6-9 July 2010. The Working Group on Monitoring and Assessment will be held from 10 a.m. on 6 July until 5.30 p.m. on 7 July and the Working Group on Integrated Water Resources Management from 2.30 p.m. on 7 July until 1 p.m. on 9 July. The working languages will be English, Russian and French. The main objective of both working group meetings is to review the implementation of the workplan as adopted at the fifth session of the Meeting of the Parties.

The need to consider monitoring and assessment in the broader context of integrated water resources management calls for close collaboration between the two working groups through cooperation on a number of joint activities. To apply this in practice the fifth session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Water Convention (Geneva, 10-12 November 2009) recommended that the Working Groups should preferably hold back-to-back meetings to allow for the joint discussion of shared agenda items such as the preparation of the second Assessment. Therefore, a joint session of the two working groups will be held on Wednesday, 7 July from 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.