In April 2025, following the tragic Pahalgam attack, India’s Cabinet Committee on Security took a step that threatens to unravel one of the most resilient achievements of international cooperation in South Asia: the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). By holding the 65-year-old agreement in “abeyance” and vowing to divert waters to Rajasthan, New Delhi has not only breached its legal obligations to Pakistan but has weaponized the most fundamental resource of life itself—water—putting the human rights of 240 million people at grave risk.
The IWT has survived wars, nuclear tests, and decades of hostility precisely because both nations recognized that water flows must transcend political enmity. The treaty allocates the western rivers—Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab—to Pakistan, irrigating 18 million hectares of farmland that constitute 80% of Pakistan’s arable land and generate nearly a quarter of its GDP. For a nation already ranked among the ten most vulnerable to climate change, with limited water storage capacity, the unimpeded flow of these rivers is not a diplomatic luxury; it is the difference between food security and famine, between livelihood and destitution.
India’s decision to suspend the treaty, justified as a response to “cross-border terrorism” and alleged “fundamental changes in circumstances,” collapses under legal scrutiny. In June 2025, and lately in February 2026 the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) delivered a clear verdict: the IWT “does not allow either Party, acting unilaterally, to hold in abeyance or suspend” its obligations. Article XII(4) explicitly states the treaty continues until terminated by mutual consent through a duly ratified new agreement. By attempting to unilaterally alter this arrangement, India violates the very foundation of treaty law—that pacta sunt servanda, agreements must be kept.