United Nations, July 09, 2025(Kamran Raja): Describing water as as a unifying force, Pakistan has warned against any attempt to weaponise and turn it into a source of division. In a national statement during a meeting held in the General Assembly to promote the achievement of SDG 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, Ambassador Usman Jadoon, Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, reiterated Pakistan’s unwavering commitment to ensuring that the 2026 Water Conference accelerates the achievement of SDG 6 and fosters an international law based approach to the governance and sustainable management of transboundary rivers and aquifers despite the recent attempts. Ambassador Jadoon said that the 2026 Water Conference must prioritize advancing practical transboundary cooperation, including through reinforcing legal frameworks and promoting conflict prevention and peaceful dispute resolution. He said that it should also elevate the voices of those countries—especially from the Global South—that depend on shared water resources for their sustainable development and survival.
He said that the conference offers a crucial opportunity for all delegations to reaffirm their commitment to fundamental principles of international water law—specifically, the equitable and reasonable utilization of shared water resources, the obligation to prevent significant harm to other riparian states, and the duty to cooperate. Pakistan welcomed the inclusion of Transboundary Water Cooperation as one of the themes for the interactive dialogues and expressed its readiness to contribute constructively to discussions under this theme by sharing insights from its decades-long treaty based water sharing arrangement. The Pakistan UN Deputy Ambassador underlined the vital importance of water for sustaining life, livelihoods, peace, and stability. He said that today two billion people around the world still lack safely managed drinking water, half of the global population lacks safely managed sanitation and water scarcity and climate impacts are rapidly rising.
“Pakistan is no exception to these challenges,” he said.
“As a semi-arid and lower riparian country, we rely heavily on the Indus River and its tributaries, which serve as the lifeblood of our nation. The Indus River Basin hosts the world’s largest contiguous irrigation system, providing food security for over 225 million people, underpinning our public health infrastructure and ensuring energy security,” he told the gathering. Ambassador Jadoon conveyed Pakistan’s sincere appreciation to the co-hosts of the 2026 Water Conference, Senegal and the United Arab Emirates, for conducting inclusive and transparent consultations on the themes for the interactive dialogues. We assure them of our full support for the successful convening of the conference, he said.