This archive report was first published on 27 June 2020.
Published on June 27, 2020, Ethiopia and Egypt are engaged in a heated dispute over the sharing of the Nile River waters. The disagreement centers around the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which Ethiopia plans to fill in July, and Egypt's concerns that it will starve the country of its primary water supply.
According to Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedu Andargachew, Egypt's insistence on 'historical rights and current use' has made it difficult to reach a settlement on the dispute. In a letter dated June 22, Mr. Andargachew stated that the notion of historical rights refers to the 1959 colonial-era agreement between Egypt and Sudan, which divided the Nile between them, ignoring Ethiopia's interests.
On the other hand, Egypt's Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry accused Ethiopia of continued 'intransigence' over filling the GERD reservoir, which he said potentially constitutes a threat to international peace and security. Mr. Shoukry wrote to the UN Security Council on June 19, stating that Egypt has elected to bring the matter to the council after exhausting every avenue of reaching an amicable solution.
The dispute has divided the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, with the US, France, Russia, the UK, and China holding differing views on the matter. South Africa, the current chair of the African Union, has argued that the issue should first be taken up by the continental body before going to the UN.
The 1959 agreement allocated nearly 90% of the Nile waters to Egypt and Sudan, with Egypt taking 55.5 billion cubic meters annually while Sudan was allocated 18.5 billion cubic meters per year. However, Article 14(b) of the 2010 Nile Basin Co-operative Framework Agreement (CFA) allowed other Nile Basin countries to do projects along the River Nile.
Former director of water resources in Kenya, John Nyaoro, has stated that Egypt's reliance on international law on common use of resources could prolong the dispute. The Egypt-Ethiopia dispute now raises the question as to why most Nile Basin countries have not ratified the CFA in order to make the agreement take effect.
