Abu Bakar Khan is a lawyer and a JURIST correspondent based in Lahore, Pakistan.
On August 31, 2026, the Court of Arbitration—a treaty-established tribunal, distinct from the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, which administers its proceedings—issued two unanimous rulings with immediate consequences for India and Pakistan. The first held that India’s April 2025 decision to place the treaty in “abeyance” neither suspended nor terminated it. The second restricted construction of disputed components at the Ratle hydroelectric project while a neutral expert completes a separate review of the project’s design.
The interim order bars India from concreting the Ratle dam wall and power intake structure, above specified levels until 90 days after the neutral expert issues a final decision, which is expected in July 2027. India must also notify the Court, a neutral expert, and Pakistan of any changes to the construction schedule. While the Court did not halt the entire 850-megawatt project, it declined two other measures sought by Pakistan, including an express order that construction proceed at India’s own risk.
The Indus Waters Treaty (Treaty), signed in 1960 after nine years of negotiations, allocates the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej to India while allocating the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab to Pakistan. The Treaty specifies how each state is permitted to use rivers allocated to the other. It also creates three avenues to pursue in the event of a disagreement: the Permanent Indus Commission, a neutral expert, and a court of arbitration. Pakistan began the present arbitration in 2016. India has not participated in the Court proceedings, although the tribunal says it considered Indian positions found in official statements and communications.
“Abeyance” ordinarily means a temporary state of suspension or inactivity. But it is not a status recognised by the Treaty, and the Treaty says it remains in force until India and Pakistan terminate it through another duly ratified treaty. The Court also rejected possible justifications under customary international law, including sovereignty, material breach, fundamental change of circumstances, armed conflict, and countermeasures. A state cannot turn political language into a new exit clause when an agreement becomes inconvenient.
India’s strongest political argument is security. The PCA’s August 31, 2026 decision records India’s April 2025 statement that the treaty would be held in abeyance until Pakistan “credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism.” The Court treated the allegation seriously. Even assuming it to be true, it asked what would follow as a matter of law. Its answer: terrorism is not a breach of this water treaty, which governs the sharing of the Indus river system, not the use of force between the two states. That distinction may feel formal in a crisis. It is also the point of law.
What I find most important in the ruling is its refusal to let one grave dispute consume every other legal relationship between the two states. If an upstream state could suspend a river treaty whenever it invoked an accusation outside that treaty, downstream rights would last only as long as political relations remained calm. That is no legal protection at all.
The harder question is compliance. India had notice of the proceedings but did not appear, and an arbitral tribunal has no enforcement mechanisms. India’s non-participation did not deprive the Court of competence, but it could make implementation more difficult. The neutral expert’s decision in 2027 will test whether the temporary construction limits preserved a real possibility of altering Ratle’s design, or merely delayed work that India intends to continue. I do not know which course India will take; the next construction reports and its conduct before the neutral expert will matter more than its public rhetoric.
Pakistan should resist treating the award as a complete victory. The country’s legal and engineering teams need one defensible record of river flows, project drawings, and construction changes. Pakistan diplomats should explain the decision as a defence of treaty stability—not as another episode in bilateral score-settling. Equally, the Permanent Indus Commission should remain available even when political dialogue is frozen. The law works best here as a channel for continued contact, not a substitute for it.
Pakistan also has work to do at home. Canal losses, groundwater depletion, and unequal distribution do not excuse any Treaty breach by India, but they weaken a state that asks international law to protect every drop and then fails to account for much of it. The August 31 rulings give Pakistan firmer legal ground. Whether that ground holds will depend on evidence, patient diplomacy, and what both states do before the concrete sets.
