Pakistan has warned that India’s unilateral decision to hold the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance has created an unprecedented crisis for Pakistan’s water security and regional stability.
Calling the move a deliberate “weaponisation of water,” Pakistan’s representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Usman Jadoon, said India’s actions amounted to material breaches of the landmark 1960 treaty.
Speaking at the Global Water Bankruptcy Policy Roundtable hosted by Canada and the United Nations University on Tuesday, Ambassador Jadoon said that since April last year, India had committed several serious violations of the treaty, including unannounced disruptions of downstream water flows and the withholding of critical hydrological data.
“Pakistan’s position is unequivocal; the treaty remains legally intact and permits no unilateral suspension or modification,” he said.
He stressed that for more than six decades, the Indus Waters Treaty had provided a time-tested framework for the equitable and predictable management of the Indus River basin, which sustains one of the world’s largest contiguous irrigation systems.
The basin, he noted, provides over 80 percent of Pakistan’s agricultural water needs and supports the lives and livelihoods of more than 240 million people.
Ambassador Jadoon said water insecurity had emerged globally as a systemic risk, affecting food production, energy systems, public health, livelihoods, and human security.
“For Pakistan, this is a lived reality,” he said, describing the country as a semi-arid, climate-vulnerable, lower-riparian state facing floods, droughts, accelerated glacier melt, groundwater depletion, and rapid population growth — all of which are placing immense pressure on already stressed water systems.
Highlighting Pakistan’s response, he said the country was strengthening water resilience through integrated planning, flood protection, irrigation rehabilitation, groundwater replenishment, and ecosystem restoration.
He cited initiatives such as ‘Living Indus’ and ‘Recharge Pakistan’ as key national efforts. However, he emphasized that systemic water risks could not be managed by any country in isolation, particularly in shared river basins.
Predictability, transparency, and cooperation in transboundary water governance, he said, were matters of survival for downstream populations.
Ambassador Jadoon further called for water insecurity to be formally recognised as a systemic global risk in the lead-up to the 2026 UN Water Conference, urging that cooperation and respect for international water law be placed at the center of shared water governance to ensure real protection for vulnerable downstream communities.
