From 2015 until 2017 it acted as the Secretariat to the Global High Level Panel on Water and Peace and now acts as the secretariat for the Group of Friends for Water and Peace,[7] about forty countries represented by their Permanent Missions to the United Nations in Geneva.[8] It also coordinates the Universities Partnership for Water Cooperation and Diplomacy, launched at the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland with IHE Delft Institute for Water Education,[9] the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati,[10] the German-Kazakh University in Almaty,[11] and Oregon State University.[12] This university consortium was established to encourage dialogue and capacity-building between countries and among different professional sectors.