Hassan Ahmad
The international seminar on the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) held in Islamabad on 30th June effectively highlighted that the water dispute between India and Pakistan is rapidly evolving from a technical resource-sharing disagreement into a severe geopolitical, environmental, and humanitarian flashpoint. Titled “Indus Water Treaty: An Instrument of Peace & Regional Stability,” the landmark conference underscores how India’s decision to place the World Bank-brokered 1960 accord “in abeyance” transforms water into a tool of strategic leverage.
The 1960 Indus Waters Treaty is a landmark agreement that establishes crucial institutional mechanisms to prevent conflict over the shared river system. For Pakistan, the system is an existential necessity, with over 80% of its arable land, economic activity, and 240 million citizens dependent on consistent, treaty-mandated water flows and data sharing for food security and disaster management. Cooperative mechanisms under the treaty are under significant strain, characterized by reduced data sharing, missed inspections, and weakened commission engagement.
India’s April 2025 decision to place the accord in “abeyance” challenges the principle of pacta sunt servanda, while disrupting verification, increasing Pakistan’s vulnerability to environmental risks, and threatening sustainable development goals. Speakers at the conference, including top Pakistani officials and international legal experts, emphasize that India is using water as political leverage. By linking water cooperation to counter-terrorism demands and halting downstream data, New Delhi is actively weaponising a vital natural resource.
The dispute highlights the classic upper-riparian vs. lower-riparian dynamic. Because India controls the head works, it possesses the physical ability to restrict or unannounced alter flows to Pakistan. The Islamabad seminar has framed the conflict as a battle over the sanctity of international law. International delegates pointed out that a single party cannot legally suspend or rewrite a multilateral treaty unilaterally.
By bypassing the established dispute-settlement layers-such as the Permanent Indus Commission and the World Bank framework-the conflict has become an existential crisis for regional diplomacy. Speakers viewed the dispute beyond politics by focusing heavily on climate change. With accelerating glacial melt and unpredictable monsoons, the rigid 1960 text is failing to adapt to shifting volumes of water, sparking zero-sum resource hoarding. Experts at the seminar stressed that water is Pakistan’s ultimate “red line.”
Because 90% of local food production and over 30% of power generation depend entirely on the Indus Basin, any upstream disruption triggers immediate domestic food, economic, and humanitarian emergencies. Pakistan’s legal position in the Indus Waters Treaty dispute, validated by Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) rulings, maintains that the 1960 treaty cannot be unilaterally suspended, adhering to pacta sunt servanda. Islamabad argues that India’s engineering projects on Western Rivers exceed permitted “run-of-river” constraints and that the PCA holds jurisdiction to arbitrate these violations, reinforcing mandatory treaty mechanisms.
From a legal standpoint, Pakistan argues that India’s unilateral decision to place the 1960 IWT in “abeyance” constitutes a fundamental breach of international law, as the concept of unilateral suspension or “abeyance” is entirely foreign to the text of the treaty and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). Islamabad contends that under Article XII(4) of the accord, the treaty can only be modified or terminated through a mutually ratified, written agreement between both nations, meaning India possesses no lawful authority to independently pause its obligations or link water sharing to political, counter-terrorism demands.
Furthermore, Pakistan underscores that India’s ongoing construction of upstream reservoir, storage, and diversion infrastructure on the Western Rivers (Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab)-such as the controversial Kishenganga and Ratle hydroelectric projects-violates the specific technical and pondage restrictions explicitly outlined in the treaty’s annexures. By boycotting arbitration, rejecting the PCA rulings, and withholding mandatory hydrological and telemetry data flow information, New Delhi is actively violating the foundational principle of pacta sunt servanda (treaties must be performed in good faith), while directly jeopardizing downstream human security and disaster preparedness.
Cooperation between India and Pakistan on the IWT is the single most critical factor for preventing regional nuclear conflict and ensuring the climate survival of over 270 million people. As the Indus Basin faces unprecedented ecological degradation, the treaty can no longer function through adversarial politics, making active bilateral engagement an absolute necessity for survival.
The writer is a student.
