A significant date in the development of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) is 16 June 1995 – twenty-five years ago – when negotiators representing 54 governments signed the ‘Final Act’. The rest is – as they say – history …

Happy Birthday, AEWA! Congratulations to the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement, an appreciated member of the UN Bonn Family, on 25 years successful work! It is with gratitude that we look up to the sky every autumn around UN Day - when the common cranes pass Bonn on their way to Africa. 

AEWA is more than the set of rules, commitments and obligations set out in a treaty. It brings together Governments, local communities, conservationists, and hunters from across Africa and Europe; all with a shared interest in flourishing wetland habitats and thriving waterbird populations. The successes of the Agreement are many and are ultimately due to the commitment, expertise and professionalism of all these individuals.  And of course, the Agreement could not continue to achieve as much as it does  without the exemplary work of the AEWA Secretariat, to whom I, on behalf of the Parties to the Agreement, would like to express my appreciation and gratitude. 

Congratulations to all the people involved in AEWA on the 25th anniversary of the Agreement. It is excellent that we have come this far, and it is good to see detailed activities undertaken at the practical level, which we believed from the start could be provided by a conservation and management tool such as AEWA. Developing a flyway conservation plan was not an entirely new concept when work on AEWA started in the late eighties. For a long time, bird conservationists believed that the protection and management of birds should be implemented across the entire range: the breeding, stopover and wintering sites.