Warns India’s water projects aim to establish ‘hydro-hegemony’
Pakistan on Friday asked the UN Security Council (UNSC) to take notice of India’s at-tempts to alter the flow of rivers governed by the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), with Depu-ty Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar warning in a letter that two Indian in-frastructure projects on the Chenab river system are aimed at diverting water and could threaten Pakistan’s water, food, and economic security.
In April last year, following a deadly attack on tourists in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), India unilaterally suspended the IWT after accusing Paki-stan of backing the attackers — a charge Islamabad categorically denied. The treaty has since remained at the centre of renewed tensions between the two neighbours over the sharing of transboundary water resources.
Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, in a post on X, said that he had handed over a letter from Dar to the President of the UN Security Council and Colombia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambas-sador Leonor Zalabata Torres, raising concerns over India’s continued violations of the IWT of 1960.
According to the envoy, the letter concerns “India’s continued illegal actions and viola-tions of the IWT of 1960”. It seeks to draw the Council’s attention to developments re-lated to the Chenab River system.
“The letter draws urgent attention of the Security Council to two illegal Indian infrastruc-ture projects linked to the Chenab River system aimed at water diversion,” he said.
He added that the projects “reveal India’s intention to illegally alter the Treaty-governed flow and use of the Western Rivers, weaponising water with dangerous implications for Pakistan’s water, food, and economic security as well as regional stability and interna-tional peace and security”.
The Pakistani envoy said the UNSC had been urged “to take cognisance of this fragile and deteriorating situation and hold India accountable for its brazen violations”.
Iftikhar further said he briefed the Security Council president on “the overall situation in South Asia” and raised concerns over “India’s continued non-compliance with its obliga-tions under UN Security Council resolutions on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute”.
A day earlier, Dar addressed the Brussels Conference on “Transboundary Water Re-sources: A Weaponised Global Common”, warning that India was pursuing a strategy of “hydro-hegemony”, with at least 17 projects, including reservoir and river diversion schemes, designed to alter the Indus river system drastically.
“It is a shared resource, a common responsibility, and ultimately a prerequisite for human dignity and sustainable development. The future of transboundary water governance must therefore be anchored in cooperation and respect for international law,” Dar said.
Meanwhile, India has launched a concerted campaign to undermine the seminar in Brus-sels amid growing global scrutiny of New Delhi’s unilateral suspension of the Indus Wa-ters Treaty (IWT), diplomatic sources said on Thursday.
According to diplomatic sources, the Indian side has been unnerved by Pakistan’s efforts to internationalise the issue of transboundary water governance and expose the dangers posed by the weaponisation of shared water resources.
The IWT of 1960 stands as one of the most carefully negotiated and legally robust trans-boundary water agreements in modern international law. Concluded between Pakistan and India with the good offices of the World Bank, the treaty was designed to remove water from the volatility of politics and conflict and to anchor it firmly in law, engineer-ing discipline, and neutral dispute resolution. It is a binding international instrument gov-erned by the foundational principle of pacta sunt servanda — that treaties must be hon-oured in good faith.
