Mekong River Commission

International Cooperation and Communications

A hardback book on the history of Mekong River
cooperation was published at the end of 2007.

The International Cooperation and Communications Section (ICCS) merges governance, development partner and communications responsibilities within the MRCS. ICCS makes recommendations on policy, manages fundraising activities, and monitors agreements made with development partners.

Ensuring the financial security of the MRC forms a crucial part of ICCS activities and during the course of 2007 agreements were concluded with ASEAN, Australia, Denmark, the European Commission, Finland, Germany, Japan and Sweden. With signed commitments standing at over US$20 million, development partner contributions to the MRC have increased by around 6% on the previous year.

Development partners showed their support to the Commission through the Joint Statement of the International Conference on the MRC, held in Hanoi in April 2007. The Statement provides recommendations and specific engagements to enable the MRC to play a stronger role in the sustainable development of water and related resources in the Mekong Basin, alongside national, regional and international partners, in order to reduce poverty. The Conference reaffirmed the role of the MRC as an important joint mechanism for informed political dialogue between the Member States and their partners on the sustainable development and use of water and related resources in the Mekong Basin.

In line with the Joint Statement, the development partners and the MRC are working together closely on a number of important topics. Regional partnerships have been strengthened, including the cooperation with the ADB and the Greater Mekong Sub-Region initiative. Similarly, the MRC has worked towards formalising its partnership with the World Bank. In the spirit of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, the donor harmonisation process has also been fostered. Development partners have shown support for the MRC’s efforts to implement the recommendations of the organisational review with a view to further modernisation.

The governance unit within ICCS provided secretarial and documentation support to the 25th and 26th meetings of the MRC Joint Committee held in Siem Reap and Vientiane respectively, to an Informal Donor Meeting in Vientiane, and to the 14th Meeting of the MRC Council, the 12th Dialogue Meeting, and the 12th the Donor Consultative Group Meeting, all held in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

ICCS also makes the arrangements for hosting official visits to the Secretariat. In 2007 visiting delegations included the Mekong Institute from Khon Khaen in Thailand, and 26 delegates from the Nile Basin Initiative, who arrived at the MRCS in October (see page 32). The visitors, from nine African countries, observed some of the similarities and major differences between the Nile and Mekong River Basins. This type of South-South river basin organisation exchange provides an important avenue for cooperation between international river basin organisations and it is something the MRC is keen to foster in the future.

The ICCS communications unit provided technical support to all MRC programmes over the year, helping to raise awareness of the work and achievements of the MRC through production of the quarterly MRC newsletter, Mekong News, the Annual Report, plus many technical reports and information products. A specially commissioned book celebrating 50 years of Mekong cooperation was published in December 2007 and distributed to development partners. Public awareness raising activities over 2007 included regular contact with the media and representation of the MRC’s work at several international forums and conferences, including the third South East Asia Water Forum in Malaysia, the 5th Annual Mekong Flood Forum, and international fisheries symposiums.

The MRC website is maintained by ICCS, and various pages were updated over the last 12 months, while more research and publications were made available for downloading. The number of visitors to the site continued to rise, with traffic on the website growing by nearly 33% from 2006 levels. Almost 370,000 page loads were recorded over the course of the year. In 2007 the River Awareness Kit was added to the website as an educational tool and the number of documents available for download increased substantially.