Hague tribunal rules India cannot suspend the Indus Waters Treaty

Since April 2025 India has said that the treaty dividing the rivers of the Indus basin with Pakistan is “in abeyance”. On Monday 31 August 2026 a Court of Arbitration sitting in The Hague answered that no such thing is possible: the Indus Waters Treaty, it ruled unanimously, has been neither suspended nor terminated and “remains fully in force”.

India rejected the decision the same day. The ruling sets out, point by point, why the court considers each of the reasons India has given for stepping away from the agreement to be insufficient in law.

What the treaty is and how the dispute began

The Indus Waters Treaty was signed in 1960. It governs six rivers of the Indus basin that flow from India into Pakistan, and hundreds of millions of people depend on their water, the AFP news agency noted. Under the treaty India may build run-of-river hydroelectric plants on the three western rivers, the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, subject to the treaty’s rules on their design and operation.

Pakistan began arbitration in August 2016 over the design of two such Indian projects, the Kishenganga and Ratle hydroelectric plants. India has never taken part in the case. It argues that the court was wrongly set up and has instead pursued a parallel procedure before a neutral expert, an engineer appointed by the World Bank. The Permanent Court of Arbitration, an intergovernmental body based at the Peace Palace in The Hague, acts as the court’s secretariat.

The dispute widened on 23 April 2025. After an attack by gunmen on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, which India blamed on Pakistan and Pakistan denied backing, New Delhi announced that the treaty would be “held in abeyance with immediate effect, until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism”. In March 2026 Pakistan asked the court to rule on whether the treaty was still in force.

What the court decided

According to the summary published by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the court first asked what “abeyance” means. The word does not appear in the treaty and has no technical meaning in international law, they found, so India’s position could only be a claim that the treaty was suspended or terminated. They then went through every ground on which that might be justified, drawing India’s arguments from its public statements and official letters since it had filed none.

• The treaty’s own terms. The treaty has no clause allowing one side to suspend or end it. It stays in force unless both countries replace it with a new one.
• Sovereignty. India has said the decision was an exercise of its sovereignty. The court found there is no rule allowing a state to set a treaty aside on that basis, citing the principle that agreements must be kept.
• Breach by Pakistan. India has accused Pakistan of refusing to renegotiate the treaty, of obstructing Indian projects with objections and lawsuits, and of sponsoring terrorism. The court found that the treaty obliges no one to renegotiate, that raising objections and using dispute procedures is what the treaty provides for, and that the terrorism allegation, which it said it took “extremely seriously”, would not amount to a breach of this treaty even if true, because the treaty deals only with the use of the rivers.
• Changed circumstances. Population growth, the need for clean energy, new dam technology, cross-border attacks and climate change were foreseeable in 1960, were not an essential basis of the agreement, or did not radically transform India’s obligations.
• Armed conflict. The court found that no international armed conflict between the two countries currently exists, and noted that the treaty had stayed in force through multiple armed conflicts since 1960.
• Countermeasures. Suspension could not be justified as retaliation for a wrong by Pakistan, in part because it would affect India’s obligations to protect fundamental human rights.

The court is chaired by Professor Sean D. Murphy of the United States. Its other members are from Belgium, the United States, Jordan and Australia. The full texts of the award and the order are to be published after the parties have been consulted on redactions.

The order on the Ratle dam

In a separate order the same day, the court restricted work at the Ratle plant. India may not pour concrete on the dam wall or the power intake structure above certain levels until 90 days after the neutral expert gives his final decision on whether the design complies with the treaty, which is expected around July 2027. India must also report any change to the construction schedule. The court reasoned that tearing out reinforced concrete later, if the design were found unlawful, would be extraordinarily difficult and costly. It declined two other measures Pakistan had requested.

How the two governments reacted

India’s foreign ministry called the body an “illegally constituted so-called Court of Arbitration” with “no jurisdiction whatsoever” over India’s sovereign decisions, and said its rulings would have no effect on Indian projects. “India’s decision to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance remains in force,” the ministry said, according to AFP.

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, wrote on X that the award “vindicates Pakistan’s consistent position that a binding international treaty cannot be unilaterally suspended or set aside”.

Why it matters

India says the court’s pronouncements will have no effect on its projects, and it is not taking part in the proceedings. The stakes are high all the same. Experts cited by AFP say water could become a flashpoint between the two countries as climate change and population growth put pressure on the farming that both economies depend on. India’s water minister, C.R. Patil, said earlier in 2026 that the government would ensure “not a single drop of water” flows to Pakistan, while Pakistan has said that any attempt to alter the flow of the rivers would be an “act of war”.