Pakistan has secured a major legal victory in its long-running dispute with India over the Indus Waters Treaty after an arbitration court in The Hague ruled that the decades-old agreement remains fully in force.
The five-member Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) unanimously ruled that India cannot unilaterally suspend the treaty and must continue to observe its obligations, including provisions governing hydropower projects on rivers flowing into Pakistan.
India placed the treaty in abeyance in April 2025 following a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 people. New Delhi said the suspension would remain until Pakistan “credibly and irrevocably” ended its alleged support for cross-border terrorism. Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack.
India did not participate in the arbitration proceedings and has rejected the court’s jurisdiction. Following the ruling, India’s Ministry of External Affairs dismissed the decision, describing the tribunal as “illegally constituted” and maintaining that the treaty’s suspension remains valid.
Pakistan, however, welcomed the ruling as a significant diplomatic and legal victory. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said the decision reaffirmed that the Indus Waters Treaty remains binding and called on India to comply with its obligations.
The arbitration court rejected arguments presented by India concerning sovereignty, terrorism, the need to renegotiate the treaty and changing circumstances such as population growth, climate change and clean-energy requirements. It concluded that international law does not permit a country to unilaterally suspend a treaty on such grounds.
Legal experts said the ruling strengthens Pakistan’s position but acknowledged that the court has limited means to enforce its decision against India.
The dispute has heightened tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, with Pakistani officials increasingly describing water security as a matter of national survival. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has warned that Pakistan considers every drop of its water a “red line.”
However, water experts have cautioned against portraying the situation as an immediate existential threat. They note that India’s storage capacity on the Chenab River is relatively limited and that many of its hydropower facilities are run-of-river projects with little capacity to store water for long periods.
The Indus Waters Treaty, signed in 1960, governs the sharing of the Indus River system between India and Pakistan and has survived decades of political and military tensions. Its future remains a major source of concern as relations between the two countries continue to deteriorate.
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