This Monday, the Permanent Court of Arbitration declared the Indus Waters Treaty to remain valid, at the heart of tensions between India and Pakistan, with the Indian government having said earlier in the year that it had suspended the treaty while announcing two hydroelectric projects.
“The Court has concluded that the Treaty has neither been denounced nor has its application been suspended and that it remains fully in force,” wrote the PCA in a statement, the oldest permanent intergovernmental organization offering a forum for the settlement of international disputes by arbitration.
The Court, which sits in The Hague, specified that India remained “bound by the obligations incumbent on it under the Treaty,” notably regarding the design and operation of the “hydroelectric projects on the western rivers.” In a unanimous decision, the Court also forbade India from continuing certain concreting works toward the construction of a dam and required that the country inform the Court, a neutral expert and Pakistan of “any modification to the construction schedule.”
Pakistan hails the decision; India objects
The Indian government immediately rejected this decision. “India has never recognized the existence of this so-called arbitrarily constituted Court,” reacted the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, stating that its decision to suspend the application of the treaty “remains in force.” For its part, Pakistan welcomed the Court’s conclusion. “Pakistan welcomes the Court’s conclusion that the treaty remains in force,” the government said in a statement.
Signed in 1960, the Indus Waters Treaty, a bilateral sharing treaty, divides the control of the basin of six rivers that originate in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir and join downstream to feed the Indus in Pakistan.
