Water Conflict, Cooperation & Diplomacy

Most of the region’s major rivers, and several of its great aquifers, cross borders. The Nile basin stretches over eleven countries and sustains more than half a billion people.¹ The Euphrates has three riparian states, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, though its basin reaches into Saudi Arabia and Jordan as well.² That geography makes friction likely.

It has also produced cooperation, very unevenly. As of 2015, more than 3,600 treaties on the use of transboundary surface waters had been catalogued since 800 CE, against one shared aquifer with a comprehensive management regime and two with rudimentary consultative arrangements.³ Rivers get law. Groundwater, on which much of this region depends, mostly does not.

The legal scaffolding on the two great shared rivers is thin and old. A protocol signed on 17 July 1987 obliges Turkey to pass a yearly average of more than 500 cubic metres a second to Syria, about 16 billion cubic metres a year, and says so only until a final allocation is agreed between the three riparians.^4 2 5 That was 39 years ago. The 1959 agreement between the United Arab Republic and Sudan, which divided 22 billion cubic metres of net benefit at Aswan and left Egypt with 55.5 and Sudan with 18.5 billion a year, is still the operative Nile allocation text for the two downstream states.⁶

The gap between the paper and the river is measurable. Euphrates flow at the Syrian border averaged about 30 billion cubic metres a year before the dams, 25.1 billion from 1974 to 1998 and 22.8 billion from 1990 to 2010.² In spring 2021 experts and officials in north-east Syria said the flow had fallen from 500 to nearly 200 cubic metres a second; a Turkish foreign ministry source called the allegations unsubstantiated and attributed lower releases to climate conditions and drought.^7 8 The academic frame for reading these asymmetries is hydro-hegemony, the study of how power rather than law allocates shared rivers, and its authors apply it to the Nile, Jordan and Tigris-Euphrates.⁹

The live files, basin by basin. On the Nile, Ethiopia’s GERD holds 74 billion cubic metres, filled in five stages from July 2020, and was inaugurated on 9 September 2025 as a US$5 billion project generating more than 5,000 megawatts.^10 11 Egypt and Sudan want a legally binding agreement on filling and operation, while Ethiopia prefers non-binding guidelines; the 2015 Declaration of Principles, signed in Khartoum on 23 March 2015, sets out ten principles and no water volumes.¹²

The basin’s institutional map moved in 2024. The Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement entered into force on 13 October 2024, after ratification by Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda and accession by South Sudan, and it paves the way for a Nile River Basin Commission. Egypt and Sudan are not parties.¹

On the Tigris and Euphrates, the asymmetry is physical before it is political. Turkey generates about 89% of total Euphrates flow from 28% of the basin area, while Syria contributes 11% from 22% of it and Iraq holds 47% of the basin area.² More than 60 main dams give the basin a maximum storage capacity of more than 144 billion cubic metres, four to five times its natural annual flow, and agriculture takes more than 70% of what is used.² On the Tigris, Iraq holds 56% of the basin area, Turkey 24.5% and Iran 19%, and the mean annual flow is 20 billion cubic metres at Mosul and 25.7 billion at Kut.¹³ Drainage and water-management works reduced the Mesopotamian marshes to 14% of their original size by 2002, and more than half was re-flooded by the early 2010s.¹³ In August 2025 an Iraqi environmental NGO said only about 800 square kilometres remained submerged, with drought and upstream dams in Turkey and Iran both cited.¹⁴ Heavy rains brought water back to the Huwaizah marshes by April 2026, though the water remained shallow.¹⁵

In the Jordan basin, the 1994 treaty sets out the allocations in detail: Israel pumps 12 million cubic metres from the Yarmouk in summer and 13 in winter with Jordan taking the rest, Jordan concedes 20 million more in winter against 20 million from the Jordan River in summer, and Jordan is entitled to 10 million cubic metres of desalinated water from saline springs.¹⁶ Oslo II, Article 40, governs the Israeli and Palestinian file: it recognises Palestinian water rights in the West Bank and defers them to permanent status talks, estimates future Palestinian needs at 70 to 80 million cubic metres a year, and recognises the necessity of making 28.6 million a year available in the interim, with Israeli commitments of 9.5 million and the Palestinian side responsible for the remaining 19.1 million.¹⁷

One case in this sector, examined in full.

Two global conventions set the default rules, and the region is only partly inside them. The 1997 UN Watercourses Convention was adopted on 21 May 1997 and entered into force on 17 August 2014, with 43 parties.²⁴ The regional parties are Syria and Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Qatar, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and the State of Palestine, joining between 1998 and 2015; Yemen signed in 2000 without ratifying, and Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Iran and the Gulf states other than Qatar are not on the list.²⁴

The 1992 UNECE Water Convention, adopted at Helsinki on 17 March 1992 and in force since 6 October 1996, now has 61 parties well beyond Europe, the latest Benin on 22 September 2026. Iraq acceded on 24 March 2023 and Jordan on 6 February 2026, the only Middle Eastern states on the list. The convention’s procedural duties apply to riparian states that are also parties, so they do not bind Iraq’s upstream neighbours Turkey, Syria or Iran.²⁵

In an international armed conflict, the relevant treaty provision is Article 54 of Additional Protocol I of 1977, which binds the states party to it.^26 27 Seventeen of the twenty countries this site covers are parties. Iran and the United States have signed it without becoming parties, and Israel and Turkey are not on the list at all.²⁷ It prohibits starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and names drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works among the objects that may not be attacked, destroyed or removed. Three qualifications matter in practice: paragraph 2 prohibits such attacks for the specific purpose of denying the objects’ sustenance value; paragraph 3 does not apply the prohibitions to objects used solely to sustain the adverse party’s armed forces or in direct support of military action, provided civilians are not left with so little food or water that they starve or are forced to move; and paragraph 5 permits a party defending its national territory against invasion to derogate within territory under its own control where required by imperative military necessity.²⁶ Paragraph 4 bars reprisals against such objects.²⁶

A soft-law reference for the protection of water infrastructure during armed conflict is the Geneva List of Principles on the Protection of Water Infrastructure. It was launched in 2019 and resulted from a process the Geneva Water Hub’s Platform for International Water Law began in 2016 during the work of the Global High-Level Panel on Water and Peace; a June 2016 roundtable contributed to the Panel’s report A Matter of Survival.²⁸

The League of Arab States has its own statement of position on shared rivers. The Arab Strategy for Water Security, approved through the Arab Ministerial Water Council, says that “around two-thirds of surface water resources in the Arab region come from major rivers, namely the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, and Senegal, all of which originate outside the Arab Region”, and that “failure to reach just and equitable agreements with source countries will continue to be a problem threatening stability in the Arab Region”. Among its 16 specific objectives are “Protect Arab water rights in waters shared with non-Arab states” and “Protect water rights in occupied Arab territories”.²⁹ On the first, it calls for support to the Arab states concerned, “whether through the provision of any available information on water use in upper reaches of these rivers or through political pressure on source reservoir countries to conclude final agreements for a fair and equitable allocation”. On the second, it states that “Israel is depleting the water resources without regard to the water rights of the inhabitants of those areas”, which it lists as the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, the occupied Palestinian territories and occupied southern Lebanon, and calls for coordinated Arab efforts to energise and manage talks and to harness international support.²⁹ These are the positions of a League document, quoted as written, and this site does not adjudicate them. The strategy is, in its own words, “not compulsory, but rather a guide to joint Arab action”.²⁹ On this site’s reading it is addressed to Arab states, and the riparians it discusses are counterparts rather than participants.

The League’s draft shared-waters convention carried the same two threads. In ESCWA’s description, its Article 13, headed “Shared water between Arab and Non-Arab States”, has the parties affirm the importance for Arab states sharing water with non-Arab states “to obtain their rights through the respect of existing agreements or working on establishing an agreement based on the principles of international law”. States proposed retitling the article “Shared water between Arab and other States” and adding active support from the parties for the Arab states concerned. The draft also contained a provision on water in occupied Arab territories.³⁰ In October 2016 the Council’s eighth session recommended postponing a decision on the convention in favour of non-binding guidance principles; the chronology, and the Council itself, are in the regional frameworks section of the governance hub.

How water diplomacy actually works here, and where each mechanism breaks.

Volumes are traded for other things

Water is often negotiated alongside other things, such as energy. On 22 November 2021 Jordan, Israel and the UAE signed a declaration of intent for 600 MW of solar capacity in Jordan, with the electricity exported to Israel, and a desalination programme in Israel to supply Jordan with up to 200 million cubic metres of water.³¹ On 16 November 2023 Jordan’s foreign minister said Jordan would not sign the agreement because of Israel’s war in Gaza.³²

The clearest current example is Iraq and Turkey. Their framework agreement for cooperation in the water field was signed in April 2024, and a second memorandum setting out executive and financing mechanisms followed in November 2025. Turkey agreed to release 1 billion cubic metres, while Iraq would receive 65% of gains above the prevailing global reference price if its oil was re-exported from Turkey to European markets.^5 18 Iraq’s cabinet approved activation of the framework and its financing mechanism on 25 July 2026, with effect from 1 September; on 8 September it capped crude exports for the fund at 33,000 barrels a day.^19 20 AGSI describes the arrangement as a financing mechanism, not an oil-for-water agreement, and Turkey has urged Iraq to cut losses from leakage, unlined canals and illegal tapping.^18 33

Technical committees outlast political freezes, when they meet

Data sharing is diplomacy’s lowest gear. The Disi agreement gives its technical committee regular meetings every six months, supervising joint monitoring and common drilling standards.²¹ The Nubian Sandstone states have a joint authority, constituted in 1992, joined by Sudan in 1996 and Chad in 1999, with monitoring and information-exchange instruments from October 2000 and a regional action programme signed on 18 September 2013.²³ Neither allocates water.

The counter-case is Oslo II, Article 40, in force since 1995. Its joint water committee decides by consensus.¹⁷ Israeli and Palestinian officials agreed in January 2017 to restart cooperation after a six-year hiatus.²²

Infrastructure re-prices every claim downstream

A dam or a desalination plant changes what each party needs from the table. Ethiopia began filling the GERD reservoir in 2020; it is designed to hold 74 billion cubic metres. Egypt and Sudan have called Ethiopia’s actions unilateral, and talks among the three countries remain stalled.^10 11

Desalination may cut the other way: on this site’s reading, a coastal state that can manufacture water needs less from a shared river.

Droughts are the stress test, and instruments fail differently

In May 2025 Iraq entered summer with about 10 billion cubic metres in storage against the 18 billion its ministry said the season needed, the lowest reserve in 80 years.³⁴ By the start of the following winter it held 5 billion, the lowest since 1933, and after an abundant spring it reached 34 billion by mid-2026, still under half the 60 billion held in 2021.^35 36

The instrument matters as much as the deal. The second Iraq-Turkey memorandum, signed in November 2025, was still awaiting cabinet approval when AGSI reported on 10 April 2026, while Iraq’s caretaker cabinet was restricted to daily affairs.¹⁸ The Council of Ministers approved activation of the framework and its financing mechanism on 25 July 2026, with the mechanism taking effect on 1 September.¹⁹

Nobody is notified

After heavy rainfall in upstream Turkey, increased Euphrates flows flooded parts of eastern Syria in late May and early June 2026. A controlled release from the Atatürk Dam, described by Kurdistan24 as the first in seven years and only the third in 22, was followed by a significant rise in Iraq’s Euphrates levels. Save the Tigris reported more than sixty water-pumping stations disabled, three bridges in Anbar out of service and the Sa’da water project stopped; Syria’s energy minister said Turkey’s warning came late, and Iraqi authorities said they learned of the release after the fact.^5 37 Turkey’s account of the release is not documented in the sources found.

Save the Tigris says that neither the 1987 nor the 1990 protocol provides for real-time notification of dam releases, binding dispute resolution or climate adaptation.⁵ Iraq and Syria signed a bilateral technical agreement in Baghdad on 25 June 2026 to exchange Euphrates flow data, while Save the Tigris called for reviving the tripartite Joint Technical Committee with Turkey.^38 37 5

Flashpoints and precedents:

Gulf states rely heavily on desalination plants for freshwater. Iraqi forces intentionally destroyed most of Kuwait’s desalination capacity during the 1990-91 Gulf War, and desalination plants were reported hit again in March 2026.³⁹ The exposure is concentrated: nearly 44% of global desalination capacity sits in the Gulf Cooperation Council market, and desalinated water supplies most daily needs in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia.⁴⁰

What happened in March 2026 is best stated as the parties stated it. On 7 March Iran’s foreign minister said a United States attack had struck a desalination plant on Qeshm Island, disrupting supply to 30 villages; the United States and Israel denied carrying out the attack.^41 42 43 On 8 March Bahrain accused Iran of indiscriminately attacking civilian targets and damaging one of its desalination plants, while its electricity and water authority said supplies stayed online.⁴² On 30 March Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity said an attack it attributed to Iran had hit a service building at a power and desalination plant, killing an Indian worker; response teams were sent to ensure the normal continuation of operations.⁴⁴ Iran denied attacking plants in Bahrain and Kuwait and blamed Israel.⁴³ By 28 April the Arab Center Washington DC judged the damage from these attacks limited, with no significant disruption to water supply reported in the GCC states, although the Qeshm plant was still out of service a month after the strike.⁴³

In Gaza the question is one of scale. By mid-2026, water production had fallen to around 40 per cent of its level before October 2023, with independent well production at less than a third. The deputy executive director of Gaza’s Coastal Municipal Water Utility estimated that more than 80 per cent of water infrastructure was damaged, destroyed or in areas unsafe to reach after more than two and a half years without any electricity supply to Gaza. He said the utility could barely ensure that six litres a day reached everyone who needed it, against a UN emergency minimum of 15 to 20 litres and a survival baseline of 7.5.⁴⁵ About three-quarters of the population still depended on trucked water at the end of July 2026, with humanitarian partners delivering more than 20,000 cubic metres a day. On 24 August 2026 Israel bombed a newly built desalination plant in Sheikh Radwan; Israel alleged that the site was next to a weapons storage facility, which its owner and residents rejected.⁴⁶

The regional bodies and ministries most involved in transboundary water diplomacy.

• Arab Water CouncilRegional body · Regional
• UN-ESCWARegional body · Regional
• Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR)Ministry · Iraq
• Ministry of Water & Irrigation (MWI)Ministry · Jordan

Mandates, procurement routes and the rest of the region’s institutions are in the decision-maker directory.

On this site’s reading, more hydraulic infrastructure than treaties is likely in the near term. The 1987 protocol turns forty in July 2027, and Save the Tigris still describes it as temporary.⁵

The near-term test is whether a wet year gets banked or spent. Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources expected to use about 40% of the recovered 34 billion cubic metres before the following winter.³⁶ The stabilising forces are the unglamorous ones: measurement everyone accepts, technical channels that stay open in bad years, procedural rules on notification of the kind set out in the 1992 convention (which bind Iraq and Jordan, but none of Iraq’s upstream neighbours)²⁵, and the slow spread of the idea that desalination and reuse make absolute scarcity negotiable even where allocation is not.

Standing references for this sector.

• Pacific Institute, Water Conflict Chronology. The standing catalogue of water-related violence, and the dataset behind the claim that such incidents are rising. pacinst.org
• Geneva Water Hub, Geneva List of Principles on the Protection of Water Infrastructure (2019). A soft-law text on protecting water systems in armed conflict. genevawaterhub.org
• Transboundary Waters Atlas, the basin-by-basin record of shared waters and the agreements covering them. transboundarywatersatlas.org