By: Madiha Khan
The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) of 1960, brokered by the World Bank and widely cited as one of the most durable transboundary water-sharing agreements in the world, has historically insulated water governance in South Asia from overt conflict. Allocating the three western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab) to Pakistan, the Treaty recognized the country’s structural vulnerability as a lower riparian state whose agrarian economy, food security, and ecological stability depend overwhelmingly on uninterrupted river flows. Today, however, India’s upstream conduct has placed this treaty framework under unprecedented strain, transforming what was designed as a cooperative legal regime into a site of coercive hydropolitics with profound humanitarian, legal, and geopolitical implications.
Pakistan’s dependence on the Indus Basin is absolute and quantifiable. The river system irrigates approximately 18 million hectares of farmland, sustains more than 90 percent of agricultural output, contributes nearly 24 percent of national GDP, and underpins the food security and livelihoods of a population of roughly 240 million. In parallel, Pakistan’s per capita water availability has declined precipitously from over 5,600 cubic meters in 1947 to below 1,000 cubic meters today, placing the country firmly within the internationally recognized threshold of water scarcity. Under such conditions, even limited upstream manipulation has disproportionate downstream consequences. India’s expanding portfolio of hydropower infrastructure on Pakistan’s allocated rivers (including Kishanganga, Ratle, Pakal Dul, and now Dulhasti-II) has therefore generated acute concern not merely over individual projects, but over their cumulative capacity to regulate, store, and strategically time river flows.
Recent international commentary, including analysis published by The National Interest, underscores that India’s Dulhasti-II Dam on the Chenab River is not viewed externally as a neutral development initiative, but as a strategic upstream instrument with the potential to directly affect Pakistan’s treaty-guaranteed water share. The report stresses that India cannot unilaterally suspend, rewrite, or reinterpret the Indus Waters Treaty, emphasizing Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which codifies the fundamental principle that “every treaty in force is binding upon the parties and must be performed by them in good faith.” Any attempt to ignore these obligations, the analysis warns, is illegal under international law and risks undermining the credibility of transboundary river treaties globally. Notably, this concern extends beyond South Asia: 153 countries share international river basins, and erosion of treaty compliance in the Indus Basin would establish a destabilizing precedent worldwide.
The strategic implications of India’s actions have been compounded by its post-Pahalgam announcement in late 2024 that it would place the Indus Waters Treaty “in abeyance.” This declaration has no basis in the Treaty text and no standing under international law. The Vienna Convention permits neither unilateral suspension nor selective non-performance absent lawful procedures and mutual consent, neither of which occurred. By signaling a shift from treaty-bound cooperation to unilateral coercion, India has effectively repositioned water from a shared resource into a pressure instrument against a downstream state. This move has been widely interpreted by legal experts as a repudiation of pacta sunt servanda, the cornerstone principle of international treaty law.
Neutral international bodies have explicitly validated Pakistan’s legal position in this regard. Communications issued under the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council have categorically stated that India cannot unilaterally suspend or hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. These communications further warned that disruption of cross-border water flows could unlawfully endanger the human rights of tens of millions of Pakistanis, including rights to water, food, work, development, and a healthy environment. By framing water interference as a human rights issue rather than a bilateral technical dispute, UN experts elevated India’s conduct into the realm of international responsibility, emphasizing that water must never be used as a political or economic weapon.
India’s parallel conduct on dispute resolution has reinforced these concerns. During 2024–2025, India avoided arbitration and challenged the very dispute-resolution mechanisms it had previously accepted under the IWT. UN experts noted that such avoidance undermines good-faith treaty performance and weakens the credibility of international arbitration systems more broadly. Decisions and proceedings associated with neutral experts and the Permanent Court of Arbitration have consistently affirmed that the Treaty remains binding and that India is obligated to allow uninterrupted flows of the western rivers to Pakistan while adhering strictly to design and operational constraints.
Operational evidence from the Chenab River further illustrates how treaty violations translate into real-world instability. Sudden, unannounced releases from upstream infrastructure raised Chenab flows to approximately 58,300 cusecs, followed by widespread concern in Pakistan that flows could be sharply reduced during dam refilling phases. Earlier recorded flows stood at around 31,000 cusecs at Marala, 17,000 at Khanki, 11,000 at Qadirabad, and 11,000 at Trimmu, demonstrating the sensitivity of Pakistan’s irrigation system to upstream decisions. The absence of advance notification and transparent data-sharing constitutes a direct breach of the Treaty’s procedural obligations and severely disrupts Pakistan’s irrigation scheduling, flood management, and agricultural planning.
The humanitarian and environmental consequences of such conduct are already visible. Reduced and erratic freshwater inflows have accelerated degradation of the Indus Delta, driven seawater intrusion, diminished mangrove forests, collapsed fisheries, and increased salinization of agricultural land. Inland, hydrological uncertainty exacerbates both droughts and floods, compounding climate-induced stresses such as glacial retreat and erratic monsoons. In this context, upstream water manipulation functions as a force multiplier of vulnerability, magnifying food insecurity, rural poverty, forced migration, and public health risks.
From the perspective of international humanitarian and human rights law, deliberate or reckless interference with water resources indispensable to civilian survival occupies a grave legal space. While formal designation of a “war crime” requires adjudication by competent international judicial bodies, existing legal frameworks (including international humanitarian law and international human rights law) prohibit conduct that intentionally or foreseeably deprives civilian populations of access to essential resources such as water. UN experts and international legal commentators have increasingly described India’s conduct as the weaponisation of water, a form of coercive practice that may amount to collective punishment and a serious violation of humanitarian principles when directed against a civilian-dependent downstream population. In this sense, India’s actions increasingly resemble those of a rogue upstream actor, willing to subordinate international law, treaty obligations, and human security to unilateral strategic objectives.
The erosion of the Indus Waters Treaty carries consequences far beyond Pakistan. Often cited by the World Bank and global water scholars as a model for conflict-resilient water diplomacy, the Treaty’s destabilization threatens to weaken confidence in transboundary water governance worldwide. As climate change intensifies competition over shared rivers, the abandonment of treaty-based cooperation in favor of coercion risks normalizing water as a tool of pressure rather than a shared resource governed by law.
Pakistan’s response has remained firmly anchored in legality, diplomacy, and multilateral engagement. While investing in domestic resilience through irrigation modernization, storage expansion, and climate adaptation, Pakistan has consistently emphasized that no level of internal reform can compensate for sustained upstream treaty violations. As a structurally vulnerable lower riparian, Pakistan’s rights under the Indus Waters Treaty are not discretionary concessions but binding international guarantees. Neutral international authorities have acknowledged this reality and affirmed that treaty compliance is a legal obligation, not a political choice.
The convergence of operational evidence from the Chenab, authoritative international legal principles, UN human rights assessments, neutral arbitral findings, and independent global analysis leads to a clear conclusion. India’s unilateral actions, ranging from treaty “abeyance” declarations and avoidance of arbitration to hydrological manipulation through projects such as Dulhasti-II ,constitute a systematic undermining of the Indus Waters Treaty and a dangerous shift toward coercive water politics. This is not a dispute of narratives but a conflict between international legality and unilateralism. In the Indus Basin, water is survival, and international law does not permit it to be used as a weapon. Sustainable peace in South Asia will depend not on upstream dominance, but on adherence to law, shared responsibility, and the fundamental human right to water.
The author is a Lecturer in International Relations at Azad Jammu and Kashmir University.
