الأنهار الجارية بين العراق وإيران في ضوء أحكام القانون الدولي

Abstract

    If the exploitation of rivers running within the borders of one country, which is called national rivers, is one of the easy and clear things, the exploitation of the water of rivers that flow within the territories of a number of countries or form borders between them, which are called international rivers, often raises several difficulties and problems between riparian or sharing countries of these rivers, and is always a focus of disputes and continuous disputes among them, especially since studies and research on water affairs indicate that The current century will witness severe conflicts and crises between these countries in what has become known as (water wars), due to the possible shortage of water resources of these rivers, which have become a rare and valuable commodity whose economic importance may exceed the importance of oil itself, especially in light of the high rates of the growing population in the world and the growing rates of human growth in it, in addition to the unprecedented rise in temperatures and the emergence of global warming and climate change phenomena in a dangerous and serious manner.  The United Nations has warned on more than one occasion that climate change could provoke conflicts over water, especially in the Middle East, which includes a large number of important international rivers such as the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile and Jordan.  Which is among the hotspots in these conflicts and the most sensitive towards this issue in the foreseeable or long term, given the limited water resources in the face of the escalating and growing needs and the increasing need for them at all levels.

    In this context, the neighboring Iran, in recent decades, alone and without consulting with the Iraqi government, has cut off many of the rivers shared with Iraq, amounting to about forty border rivers shared between large and small, and converted into its territory or the establishment of huge water projects in its basins, including dams, reservoirs, canals and tunnels, to benefit from them in the interior fully without any regard to Iraq's historical rights acquired since ancient times in these rivers and the great impact of these actions and activities on the natural, environmental and social life in it, whether directly or indirectly, especially since some of these rivers constitute by their geographical and formative nature important sources and tributaries of the Tigris and Shatt al-Arab rivers and the southern marshes, and it is also an important element of natural life in the Iraqi border areas, cities and kasbahs. There is no doubt that such actions constitute in themselves a clear violation by Iran of the principles of And the rules of use of the waters of internationally recognized international rivers, whether it is a convention, especially the United Nations Convention of 1997 on the exploitation of international rivers for non-navigational purposes, customary or general principles settled in the vicinity of international relations in general and between the riparian countries in these rivers in particular, as well as that the international judiciary and jurisprudence has approved and adopted in many of its rulings, decisions and jurisprudential and advisory opinions