Egypt Threatens Nile Basin Agreement

Ministers of the nine African Nile River littoral nations are moving ahead with plans to establish a permanent body tasked with determining equitable use of the world’s longest river despite unresolved differences between Egypt and Sudan. Agreement among seven of the nine states is expected to be finalized next month. The nine countries, grouped in the World Bank-sponsored Nile Basin Iniiative, failed at a meeting earlier this month in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, to reach final agreement.

Next month’s agreement would crown some ten years of torturous efforts to agree on a mechanism to equitably distribute water and could create a model for other conflict-prone river basins. Egypt and Sudan have charged the agreement could threatn their historical right to water security. Time will whether the two major littoral states have the power to thwart next month’s planned agreement. Speaking to the Egyptian parliament, Egyptian water and irrigation minister Mohammed Allam warned that “if the Nile basin countries unilaterally signed the agreement it would be considered the announcement of the Nile Basin Initiative’s death.”

Egypt and Sudan base their rights on past treaties to which other Nile riparian states were not parties. The most recent of these treated was signed by Egypt and Sudan in 1959. Under that treaty Egypt is entitled yearly to 55.5 billion cubic meters of the 84 billion cubic meters of water that reach it’s High Aswan Dam each year. Egypt and Sudan insist that the rights they derive from this and an earlier treaty be incorporated in any future agreement.

The majority of Nile riparian states who were not signatories of those treaties insist that they are no obliges to recognize them or bound by them and reject the concept of historical rights. As an alternative to the planned new body that would have to negotiate the terms of equitable distribution, Egypt is pushing for creation of Nile River Basin Commission that would be a deliberative body authorized to take decisions only by consensus.

Egypt argues that the rights it derives from past treaties do not threaten the water security of downstream riparian states. Egyptian officials note that those rights account for only five percent of the Nile’s total reserves of 1,600 billion cubic meters. They also point out that with the exception of Ethiopia, Egypt’s concern about water security is the most acute.