The Millennium Development Goals, set out in April 2000 by the Millennium Summit, set out to halve the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation by 2015. Speaking at this summit of leaders of almost all countries of the world, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the problem of providing the world's population with water resources one of the most important tasks of the world community in the Millennium Report.

The growth of the world's population, inefficient use of water resources for economic development and environmental pollution not only significantly complicate the solution of this problem, but also exacerbate the shortage of fresh water in a number of countries, which for them has already become one of the biggest threats to their economic security. The situation is so serious that it is often fraught with armed conflict.

Disputes and even wars over water control have arisen since ancient times, especially between the Sumerian cities between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. But there, almost five and a half thousand years ago, two Sumerian city-states - Lagash and Umma-concluded an agreement that ended their long-standing dispute over the waters of the Tigris River. This treaty is considered the oldest international agreement on the division of river waters. Now, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, there are more than 3.6 thousand interstate agreements related to the regulation and division of water resources. These include such major multilateral regulatory documents as the World Water Treaty of 1998, the Water Action Plan adopted at the 1977 UN Conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina, the EU Common Water Resources Programme of 1985, and the Convention on the Protection and Use of Natural Resources in the region. trans-boundary watercourses and international lakes 2002, etc.

However, this rather extensive international legal framework cannot prevent further aggravation of the problem of water resources and, consequently, the struggle for them. At the same time, efforts to jointly find solutions to the water problem have been intensified.

This will be discussed in our collection of articles under the heading "Actual problem", which opens with review materials by N. Petrov and I. Abramova, L. Fituni.

The situation is particularly tense in the Middle East and Africa. And first of all-around the Nile, the use of which is regulated by the Egyptian-Sudanese treaty of half a century ago, which does not meet the requirements of modern realities. This acute topic is covered in an article by the Sudanese researcher Chong Deng Alak. P. Tsarev's article describes an example of peaceful resolution of water disputes between Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

Permanent link to this publication: