In April 2025, following the tragic Pahalgam attack, India’s Cabinet Committee on Security took a step that threatens to unravel one of the most resilient achievements of cooperation in South Asia: the Indus Waters Treaty. By placing the 65-year-old agreement in “abeyance” and signalling plans to divert waters toward Rajasthan, New Delhi has not only questioned its legal obligations but has also risked turning the most basic resource of life into an instrument of political pressure, putting the human rights of nearly 240 million people at stake.
The Indus Waters Treaty has survived wars, nuclear tests, and decades of mistrust precisely because both countries recognized that water must remain above political conflict. The treaty allocates the western rivers—Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab—to Pakistan, irrigating around 18 million hectares of farmland that account for about 80 percent of the country’s arable land and nearly a quarter of its GDP. For a country already among the world’s most climate-vulnerable, with limited storage capacity and erratic monsoons, uninterrupted river flows are not a diplomatic concession. They are the foundation of food security, livelihoods, and social stability.
India’s decision to suspend the treaty, justified as a response to “cross-border terrorism” and alleged “fundamental changes in circumstances,” faces serious legal hurdles. In June 2025, the Permanent Court of Arbitration held that the treaty does not allow either party, acting unilaterally, to suspend its obligations. Article XII(4) clearly states that the agreement remains in force unless both parties terminate it by mutual ratification. The principle is simple: agreements must be honoured.
The arguments advanced to justify suspension—population growth, energy demands, and security concerns—do not meet the legal threshold required under international treaty law.
The doctrine of fundamental change of circumstances applies only when shifts are so drastic that they transform the nature of obligations or threaten a state’s existence. Demographic pressures or renewable energy ambitions do not meet this standard. Nor does the claim of a “material breach” hold, since disputes over hydropower projects were already covered by the treaty’s elaborate dispute-resolution mechanisms, which both sides were expected to use.
Even if one accepts India’s security concerns, suspending water flows cannot be considered a lawful countermeasure. International law requires countermeasures to be proportionate, temporary, and reversible, and they must not affect obligations linked to fundamental human rights.
Disrupting water supplies to a country of hundreds of millions, threatening access to food, water, health, and development, cannot be described as proportionate or reversible. It amounts to collective punishment dressed up as state policy.
The humanitarian implications are immediate. International human rights bodies have repeatedly affirmed that water must never be used as a political weapon. Yet statements about permanently diverting western river waters suggest a long-term strategy that would undermine the region's agricultural lifeline. Such moves risk violating not only treaty commitments but also broader obligations to prevent trans-boundary environmental harm.
The treaty’s suspension cannot be viewed in isolation from this larger political context. Prolonged conflicts create conditions for instability and escalation over water risks, transforming a technical dispute into a deeper strategic confrontation. Pakistan has already warned that any diversion of treaty-allocated waters would be seen as an act of war, a reminder of how fragile the regional balance remains.
Way Forward
The way forward is not through coercion but through compliance and dialogue. India should restore the treaty without conditions, re-engage with the Permanent Court of Arbitration proceedings it has boycotted, and step back from plans to divert trans-boundary waters. Pakistan, for its part, must continue to use legal and diplomatic channels to address disputes within the treaty’s framework.
The international community also has a role. In an era defined by climate change, water cannot become a weapon of politics. The water right is universal, non-negotiable, and inseparable from the right to life itself. Any attempt to use rivers as tools of pressure sets a dangerous precedent, not only for South Asia but for water-stressed regions around the world.
Sixty-six years ago, leaders still scarred by partition chose cooperation over conflict. They recognized that rivers could either divide or sustain nations, and they chose the latter.
Today, as the climate crisis deepens and regional tensions simmer, that wisdom is needed more than ever. To sacrifice the Indus Waters Treaty on the altar of political retaliation is to endanger not just Pakistan’s future, but the very possibility of peaceful coexistence in South Asia.
Water must flow. So must diplomacy.
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