International law is not concerned with studying all rivers, but rather with studying only the international river, which is the river that separates the territories of two or more countries, or passes through the territories of two or more countries, without considering the extent to which the river is navigable or not.
A river that passes through the territories of more than one country is considered an international river even if it is connected to the territory of another country through one of its multiple tributaries. An international river is a water system consisting of all waterways and lakes that form a single natural basin. This basin also includes groundwater that may be connected to the river or one of its tributaries. This basin may end in an internal lake in the downstream country, and the river may flow into one of the seas or oceans.
The use of international rivers was limited in the past to navigation purposes only between countries, and some rules were established to regulate international rivers for that purpose, including, for example, the “Barcelona Convention of 1921”, but over time, the uses of international rivers multiplied and diversified and included uses other than navigation purposes such as “irrigation, industry, electricity generation, etc.”, and a group of customary international rules emerged to regulate those uses, the most important of which are the Helsinki Rules of 1966, leading to the approval of the United Nations General Assembly of the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses on 21 May 1997, by a majority of 104 countries, the objection of 3 countries, and the abstention of 27 countries from voting. It is worth noting that this agreement entered into force in August 2014.
Due to the diversity of uses of rivers for purposes other than navigation, the agreements regulating international rivers multiplied and many jurisprudential theories were formulated to interpret their regulation.
Given that the Nile River is the longest international river and that eleven countries border it, as well as the stark differences in the circumstances of these nations regarding their reliance on its waters between those where the river serves as a single water source among many others, like Ethiopia and the countries of tropical sources, and those where it serves as the most significant and nearly exclusive water resource, like Egypt, it was only natural that the river would lead to a number of legal issues between these nations, and it was also natural that Egypt would attach great importance to its rights over it.
In this publication, we will try to review Egypt’s legal rights to the waters of the Nile River, through three topics. First, we will discuss the legal rules regulating the exploitation of international rivers for purposes other than navigation. Second, we will discuss the legal organization of the Nile River. Third, we will discuss the Framework Agreement for Cooperation of the Nile Basin Countries (Entebbe Agreement) and the Egyptian legal stance towards the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
