The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague issued a supplemental award on Wednesday morning affirming that the Indus Waters Treaty remains in full force and that neither India nor Pakistan can unilaterally suspend or withdraw from it without the other's consent. The award builds on the court's earlier ruling in the long-running dispute over Indian hydroelectric projects on the western rivers of the Indus system.
Pakistan's foreign ministry called the ruling a "complete vindication" of Islamabad's position and said it represented the third successive arbitration outcome to come down on Pakistan's side since 2023. The ministry statement, issued by foreign secretary Amna Baloch, urged India to resume technical-level talks on the Kishanganga and Ratle hydroelectric projects, which had been suspended after the May 2025 conflict between the two countries.
India's external affairs ministry, in a brief statement on Wednesday afternoon, said New Delhi was studying the award and reserved the right to a formal response in due course. India had argued in its written submissions that the post-2025 changes in the security environment, particularly cross-border attacks attributed to Pakistan-based groups, gave it the right to suspend treaty obligations. The court rejected that argument, ruling that the treaty's integrity does not depend on the broader political relationship between the parties.
The Indus Waters Treaty, signed in 1960 and brokered by the World Bank, allocates the three western rivers of the Indus system — the Indus itself, the Jhelum and the Chenab — to Pakistan, and the three eastern rivers to India. India retains limited rights to build run-of-the-river hydroelectric projects on the western rivers, subject to design constraints that have been the central focus of arbitration since 2007.
The ruling lands at a delicate moment in the wider India-Pakistan thaw. Former officials, retired generals and parliamentarians from both sides have held roughly four quiet meetings over the past year, in Muscat, Doha, Bangkok and London, exploring whether the post-2025 freeze on dialogue could be lifted. Pakistani officials privately say Islamabad will use the PCA award as a platform to push for the resumption of the Permanent Indus Commission, which last met in 2024.
Indian Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi on May 16 warned that Islamabad would have to choose whether it wanted to be "part of geography or history" if it continued to harbour militant groups, a remark Pakistan's foreign office said was incompatible with India's simultaneous claim to be a treaty partner. The World Bank, in a separate statement on Wednesday, urged both governments to "treat the treaty as the durable framework it has been for more than six decades."