The Indus Waters Treaty: What Comes After the Hague?

Raju Korti
For 65 years, the Indus Waters Treaty survived what diplomacy between India and Pakistan could not. Wars, terrorism, political upheavals and repeated crises failed to dislodge an agreement signed in 1960 under the auspices of the World Bank. Yet the treaty is now suspended by India, challenged by Pakistan and, following the latest ruling from The Hague, caught in an extraordinary legal and diplomatic limbo. The Permanent Court of Arbitration has ruled that the treaty remains binding and that India cannot unilaterally place it in abeyance. India, however, has rejected the ruling, maintaining that the court has no jurisdiction and that its decision to keep the treaty in abeyance remains firmly in force.

The background is well known. Following the Pahalgam terror attack of April 2025, in which 26 people were killed, India announced that the Indus Waters Treaty would remain in abeyance until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably ended its support for cross-border terrorism. The decision represented a fundamental departure from India's traditionally cautious handling of the treaty. The agreement had given India the principal rights over the eastern rivers, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, while Pakistan received the larger share of the western rivers, Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, subject to specified Indian uses, particularly for hydropower.

The Hague ruling has now complicated an already difficult situation. The Court of Arbitration concluded that the treaty does not provide for unilateral suspension or termination by either country and directed India to continue observing its obligations. It also imposed interim restrictions on certain construction at the Ratle hydro-electric project in Jammu and Kashmir, pending consideration by the treaty's separate neutral-expert mechanism. India has rejected the award in its entirety, describing the arbitration body as illegally constituted and reiterating that it has never recognised its jurisdiction.

Indus Waters (File grab) 

Pakistan, predictably, has welcomed the ruling. Islamabad sees it as an affirmation of its contention that India cannot use the treaty as an instrument of political pressure and cannot unilaterally alter the established water-sharing arrangement. Significantly, however, Pakistan has also indicated that it is studying the decision and considering how it might help create a pathway back to engagement under the treaty. That phrase may ultimately prove more important than the celebratory rhetoric surrounding the verdict.

For neither country does the present impasse offer a satisfactory long-term solution. India cannot reasonably be expected to accept a judicial mechanism whose jurisdiction it disputes, particularly when it believes Pakistan has exploited the treaty's dispute-resolution machinery to delay or complicate Indian hydroelectric projects. Pakistan, equally, cannot afford to treat the Indus system merely as another arena of confrontation. Around four-fifths of its agricultural land depends on the river system, while its food security, power generation and drinking-water requirements are deeply intertwined with it. Water is therefore not simply an economic issue for Pakistan. It is an existential one.

What, then, happens next? The answer is unlikely to emerge from another courtroom. The more plausible route is a return, however reluctant, to direct diplomacy. The two countries will eventually have to distinguish between the legal dispute over the treaty and the practical necessity of managing rivers that do not recognise political frontiers. A functioning dialogue on reservoir operations, hydrological data, flood management, hydropower projects and future storage capacity would serve both sides better than an endless succession of competing legal proceedings.

India has acquired considerable strategic leverage by placing the treaty in abeyance, but leverage is most useful when it produces an outcome. Its objective cannot simply be to demonstrate that it possesses the capacity to alter the status quo. The larger objective would be to secure a new understanding in which India's legitimate developmental and strategic requirements are acknowledged while Pakistan receives credible assurances about downstream water flows. Such an arrangement could involve revisiting outdated technical provisions, strengthening data-sharing mechanisms and creating a more contemporary dispute-resolution framework.

Pakistan, for its part, will have to recognise that the old assumption of an immutable treaty operating independently of the broader India-Pakistan relationship has become untenable. Islamabad cannot expect the water relationship to remain insulated indefinitely from terrorism, security concerns and the larger deterioration in bilateral relations. If it wants the treaty restored, it may eventually have to address the political conditions India has attached to its suspension.

The World Bank, meanwhile, is unlikely to be able to impose a solution. Its role was instrumental in facilitating the original treaty, but the present crisis is fundamentally political. The parallel mechanisms involving the Court of Arbitration and the neutral expert have themselves become part of the dispute. The Hague ruling may establish one legal interpretation, but it cannot compel India to accept a jurisdiction it does not recognise.

The ultimate irony is that both countries have a powerful reason to negotiate. India may possess the advantage of being the upper riparian, but it cannot manufacture water at will, nor can it escape the ecological and humanitarian consequences of a destabilised Indus basin. Pakistan may be the more water-dependent country, but its best protection lies not in international declarations alone, but in a workable relationship with the country upstream.

The Indus Waters Treaty may therefore be entering not its final chapter, but a period of renegotiation in everything but name. India is unlikely simply to return to the old status quo, while Pakistan cannot permanently live with an arrangement in abeyance. Somewhere between these two uncompromising positions lies the only sustainable answer. The Hague may have delivered a ruling, but the real verdict will ultimately be delivered across the negotiating table. And that is where India and Pakistan must eventually meet.