Indus Waters in Abeyance
The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) of 1960 has long been held up as a rare success story: a robust, technical water-sharing framework that survived wars, diplomatic freezes, and shifting regional politics. For over six decades, it has guaranteed Pakistan, the downstream state, predictable flows from the western rivers of the Indus system and provided a structured dispute-settlement mechanism. Today, however, this architecture is under unprecedented strain. India’s recent decision to hold the Treaty “in abeyance,” coupled with delayed information-sharing, unilateral project design changes, and a broader pattern of non-cooperation, has moved the IWT from a quiet technical arrangement into the center of an international legal and human rights debate.
What is striking about the emerging discourse is that Pakistan’s concerns are no longer voiced by Islamabad alone. A growing body of neutral and quasi-judicial assessments, from United Nations Special Procedures to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) and specialized legal analyses, converges on a core point: India cannot unilaterally suspend or hollow out a binding treaty regime without violating fundamental principles of international law.
The recent communication by UN Special Procedures to the Government of India, issued in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack and India’s reported cross-border strikes, explicitly links the decision to hold the IWT “in abeyance” with grave risks to human rights, including the rights to life, water, food, work, a healthy environment and development for tens of millions of Pakistanis
The scale of potential impact is not abstract. The Indus river system irrigates around 18 million hectares in Pakistan and underpins roughly a quarter of the country’s GDP, sustaining the livelihoods and food security of a population of nearly 240 million. These are precisely the stakes that the UN experts highlight in warning that any disruption of flows, or the use of water as leverage, could unlawfully endanger the basic rights and survival of millions. Their communication reiterates a principle that has gained wide recognition in international water and human rights law: shared rivers cannot be transformed into instruments of political pressure or collective punishment.
On the legal plane, the UN experts’ position is reinforced by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), which codifies the rules governing how treaties are interpreted, suspended, or terminated. As several neutral legal analyses have underlined, including detailed work by treaty-law specialists, the VCLT does not recognize “abeyance” as a free-floating category that a state can invoke at will. It speaks instead of “suspension,” which may only occur in accordance with the treaty’s own provisions or with the consent of all the parties. In the case of the Indus Waters Treaty, Article XII was carefully drafted to limit unilateral modification or termination, reflecting an explicit intention to insulate the regime from abrupt political swings.
That intention has been confirmed in recent proceedings before the Permanent Court of Arbitration, convened under the IWT’s own dispute-resolution mechanisms. In decisions issued in mid-2025, the PCA reaffirmed that the Treaty remains in force and that its procedures, including neutral expert review and arbitration, are binding on both India and Pakistan.
India’s attempts to bypass or delegitimise these mechanisms, by refusing participation or questioning jurisdiction after disputes have been properly seized, therefore run against not only the text of the Treaty but also authoritative interpretations by a permanent arbitral tribunal established precisely to resolve such disagreements
The UN communication emphasizes this point in human-rights terms. It notes that when a state disengages from agreed dispute-settlement channels and resorts instead to unilateral action affecting transboundary resources, it undermines the principle of good-faith performance of treaties, pacta sunt servanda, that is central to the stability of the international legal order. By explicitly tying treaty compliance to the protection of socio-economic rights downstream, the experts also situate the IWT within a broader matrix of obligations: the duty not to interfere with the enjoyment of rights outside one’s borders when harmful cross-border impacts are reasonably foreseeable, and the responsibility of upper riparian states to manage shared rivers in a manner consistent with sustainable development.
Beyond the UN system, a range of independent legal and policy institutions has examined India’s declaration of abeyance. Expert group meetings convened by research institutes have concluded that unilateral suspension is incompatible with both the IWT and the VCLT, noting that India has not identified any lawful ground, such as mutual consent, material breach by the other party, or properly established “fundamental change of circumstances” that would justify setting aside its obligations. Even analyses emerging from within India that argue for the renegotiation of the Treaty acknowledge that the current text was negotiated and implemented in good faith for decades, and that any structural change would ideally require a new understanding rather than simple non-performance. Taken together, these neutral assessments significantly narrow the space for characterising Pakistan’s position as merely political or rhetorical.
When UN Special Procedures warn against the unlawful use of force on Pakistani territory and link that concern to attempts to instrumentalise water flows; when the PCA reiterates the continuing validity and binding force of the IWT’s procedures; and when specialized legal commentary stresses that “abeyance” has no standing in treaty law absent consent, the emerging picture is one of broad-based legal convergence, not diplomatic spin
This does not mean that the Treaty is beyond critique or that Pakistan’s own water-management challenges vanish. Nor does it preclude debate about updating the IWT’s technical parameters in light of climate change, demographic pressures, and evolving energy needs. But it does clarify the baseline from which any such conversation must begin: as long as the Indus Waters Treaty is in force, both parties remain bound to perform it in good faith, follow its procedures for resolving disputes, and refrain from actions that weaponise shared rivers to the detriment of millions of people. In this respect, Pakistan’s core legal position that unilateral suspension, data withholding, and design changes outside agreed processes are impermissible has been repeatedly affirmed by some of the world’s most respected neutral legal and institutional authorities, not merely echoed by its own officials.
As the crisis around the Indus basin deepens, the real test for the region will be whether law and institutions can restrain the temptation to use water as a tool of coercion. Neutral international assessments have already drawn the legal lines with unusual clarity. The responsibility now lies with the parties, and with the wider international community, to ensure that a treaty that once symbolised resilience is not eroded into a precedent for selective compliance with international obligations, with Pakistan’s farmers, workers, and urban populations bearing the first and heaviest costs.
