Egypt receives about 98% of its fresh water from the Nile River. The country has reached a stage where the quantity of water is imposing limits on its economic development. The present share per capita is below 1000 CM / year, and it might drop to 500 CM / year by the year 2025, which indicates �water scarcity�. Groundwater constitutes an important source of fresh water whether in the Nile valley or in the desert. Reuse of agricultural drainage water has been practiced for a long time, as most drains in the Nile Valley flow back into the river�s mainstream. In the Nile Delta, an official policy for reuse of agricultural drainage water has been adopted since the late 1970s. Egypt also initiated programs for the treatment of domestic wastewater for potential reus

In Egypt Water management is fragmented among several ministries and authorities either in a direct or indirect way. The Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI) is the ministry of sole responsibility to authorize water use and manage available water resources. Other ministries and authorities involved in water resources management are: Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR), Ministry of Housing, Public Utilities and New Urban Societies (MHUNC), General Organization for Industrialization (GOFI), Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP), State Ministry for Environmental Affairs, River Transportation Authority (RTA), Ministry of Local Development (MLD), and Ministry of Electricity (MOE).

In response to the previously mentioned challenges, MWRI has adopted new integrated water resources management (IWRM) policies to achieve sustainability in water resources utilization for current and future generations. Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is a cross-sectoral policy approach to respond to the growing demands for water in the context of finite supplies. IWRM focuses on major aspects of water resources, including supply and demand management, and quantity as well as quality management. It also considers the integration of socio-economic and environmental aspects in water management, and the involvement of all stakeholders in the various management activities.

The Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) has also reconignized the challenges facing Egypt's Water Resources and has established a number of programs to confront the situation. In an effort to protect the Nile River, EEAA established environmental labs all over Egypt to monitor water quality on regular basis. It also runs inspection audits on factories that discharge their wastes to waterways. The agency has also established a gender equality unit that offer gender training programs in governorates and slum to raise the awareness of a women towards water resources protection.

A community is not a collection of equal people living in a particular geographic region. It is usually made up of individuals and groups who command different levels of power, wealth, influence and ability to express their needs, concerns and rights. The most important two groups in any community are women and men. The deferential impacts of development initiatives on women and men can only be identified if monitoring and evaluation mechanisms are sensitive to gender. Gender refers to the roles and responsibilities of men and women and the relationship between them. Their roles are distinguished by their sex which is determined by their biological and influenced by historical, religious, economic, cultural and ethnic factors. As women and men are defined in the weave of specific social fabrics, the relation they share constitutes what is known as gender relations.

In the area of integrated water resource management, the country has been working towards the overall goal of mainstreaming gender in the policy framework and programmes through the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI) and other organizations and institutions. The present and future objectives of this strategy provide sample space to include attention to roles, responsibilities and relations of male and female water users in order to ensure the sustainable utilization of water resources uses for all sectors to meet national and regional development objectives. The MWRI represents an example of the number of female engineers which increased in 1995 to 15% female and the number of female decision makers increases to 10%.

Moreover, many programs promoted the role of women participation in water resources management. Many activities were performed at MWRI through different projects' actions and their achievements in that regard have been well recognized. Some examples of these programs are: Advisory Panel Project on Water Management, NAWQAM Project, and Water Boards Project. The gender mainstreaming issue was also tackled by EEAA in cooperation with the National Council of women particularly the right of women to access employment opportunities and get proper education through good governance, democracy and participation. The objective here was to educate women on environmental and health problems, enabling them to do their functions without jeopardizing the environment; and empowering them to assume responsibility of community development.

The most recent project is �MAINSTREAMING GENDER DIMENSIONS INTO WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT IN THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION� PROJECT (GEWAMED).

The overall objective of the GEWAMED is to contribute to the mainstreaming the gender dimensions in the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the Mediterranean Region, by promoting a dialogue among the countries of the Region and establishing regional and national information networks and coordination structures to promote the adoption of gender sensitive policies and build a common knowledge base.