The status of the UN Watercourses Convention: does it still hold water?

ABSTRACT

When the UN General Assembly adopted the Watercourses Convention in 1997, it was heralded as a major milestone in the evolution of international water law. Yet, more than 20 years later and five years since it came into force, enthusiasm for the instrument appears to have waned. Based on patterns in the UNGA vote and assorted ratifications, and statements of various delegates to the UN’s International Law Committee, Sixth Committee and General Assembly, positions on the convention’s text are explored to uncover possible reasons for its diminishing appeal. Other externalities are also considered in terms of the convention’s viability.

KEYWORDS:

• Watercourses Convention
• international water law
• transboundary waters
• shared waters
• international river basin

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Courtney Gately, my research assistant and second-year law student at Texas A&M University School of Law, for invaluable research support and helping organize the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. While the state of Palestine is not a recognized nation and full member of the UNGA, on 29 October 2012, it received non-member observer status in the UN in accordance with Article 35, paragraph 2, of the UN Charter (G.A. Res. 67/19, 2012). According to an internal memorandum issued in 2012 by the UN’s undersecretary-general for legal affairs, Palestine is ‘able to become a party to any treaties that are open to “any State” or “all States” (“all States” formula treaties) deposited with the Secretary-General’ (O’Brien, 2012).

2. The Helsinki Rules were later supplemented by the ILA through subsequent resolutions and reports: Articles on Flood Control, International Law Association, 1972; Resolution on the Protection of Water Resources and Water Installations in Times of Armed Conflict, 1976; Resolution on International Water Resources Administration, 1976; Regulation of the Flow of Water of International Watercourses, 1980; Articles on the Relationship between Water, Other Natural Resources and the Environment, 1980; Montreal Resolution on Pollution of the Waters in an International Drainage Basin, Report of the Sixtieth Conference of the International Law Association Held at Montreal, 1982; Complementary Rules Applicable to International Water Resources, Report of the Sixty-Second Conference of the International Law Association Held at Seoul, 1986; Seoul Rules on International Groundwaters, 1986; Rules on Cross-Media Pollution, 1994; Articles on Cross-Media Pollution Resulting from the Use of the Waters of an International Drainage Basin, 1996; and Articles on Private Law Remedies for Transboundary Damage in International Watercourses, 1996.

In 2004, the ILA adopted its Berlin Rules on Water Resources, which were supposed to supersede all of the association’s prior water-related rules and resolutions. However, due to disagreement over the scope and content of that report, the Berlin Rules have been controversial (Bogdanovic, Bourne, Burchi, & Wouters, 2004; Bogdanović, 2019).

3. See ‘Notes for Table A1 and Table 2’ at the end of this paper for criteria used to develop this table.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Texas A&M University School of Law.