Devising New Law to Address Global Water Scarcity

Abstract

In 1966, the International Law Association approved the Helsinki Rules on the Uses of International Rivers. The Helsinki Rules quickly came to be seen as the authoritative summary of the customary international law on transboundary or internationally shared waters. The United Nations General Assembly, in 1970, refrained from endorsing the Helsinki Rules, instead choosing to request the International Law Commission to prepare a set of “draft articles” on the “nonnavigational uses of international watercourses” modelled on the Helsinki Rules. The Commission’s Draft Articles, completed in 1994, in turn were reworked by the Sixth (Legal) Committee of the General Assembly into the United Nations Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourse, approved by the General Assembly by a vote of 103-3 on May 21, 1997. While ratifications of the UN Convention have proceeded slowly and it has yet to enter into force, it has become recognized as authoritative on the customary international law governing the issues that it addresses. Finally, on August 21, 2004, the International Law Association, meeting in Berlin, approved the Berlin Rules on Water Resources as the authoritative summary of all the customary international law applicable to waters—including this time all waters and not just to transboundary or international waters. The Berlin Rules thus for the first time incorporate into a single document the customary international law applicable to transboundary or internationally shared waters, the relevant international environmental law, the relevant international law of human rights, and the relevant international humanitarian law.