ISLAMABAD — Pakistan has appealed to the United Nations to prompt India to honour its obligations under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), highlighting concerns over India’s decision to suspend the pact earlier this year.
Addressing a briefing at the United Nations Security Council on environmental impacts of armed conflict, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, described the unilateral suspension by India as a “textbook example” of the weaponisation of shared natural resources. He urged India’s early return to full compliance with the treaty’s mechanisms.
He pointed out that the IWT has for over six decades stood as a landmark in water-sharing cooperation between Pakistan and India, even amid hostility, and warned that India’s suspension undermines the letter and spirit of the agreement, jeopardises ecosystems, disrupts data-sharing and puts millions of lives dependent on the Indus basin’s waters at risk.
The treaty allocates Pakistan rights over the western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) and India the eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) while allowing India limited use of the western rivers under stringent conditions. Islamabad maintains that there is no clause allowing one party to unilaterally suspend or modify the pact.
Ahmed noted that the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s 2025 award reaffirmed the continuing validity of the IWT and its dispute-settlement mechanisms, reinforcing Pakistan’s position that all issues must be resolved within the treaty’s legal framework.
He emphasised that the immediate priority must be safeguarding the treaty’s implementation, protecting vulnerable populations relying on the water system for food, energy and survival, and transforming shared natural resources into instruments of cooperation rather than points of contention.
