SACOSAN VII Inter Country Working Group (ICWG) meeting has been held in Male’ at Central Hotel from 18 -19 October 2016. The two day regional meeting was officially inaugurated by Minister of State for Environment, Abdul Matheen Mohamed. This was a two day regional meeting attended by 17 participants from SACOSAN member countries in the South Asia region. SACOSAN member countries are Afganistan, India, Nepal, Bangladhesh, Srilanka, Bhutan, Pakistan and Maldives. Supporting agencies and civil society organizations both international and local represented the meeting included Water Supply Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), UNICEF, World Bank, WaterAid, FANSA and Water Care.

The objective of the two day regional meeting was to discuss about the preparation of upcoming SACOSAN 7, share SACOSAN 6 report and share lessons learnt for improving future conference. SACOSAN 6 was hosted in Dhaka, Bangladhesh in January 2016 and the next conference – SACOSAN 7 will be hosted is Pakistan in early 2018. SACOSAN (South Asian Conference on Sanitation) is a biennial regional sanitation conference held in one of the SAARC countries on a rotational basis. The first conference was held in Dhaka, Bangladhesh in 2003.