The majority report left the entire problem for the passage of time to solve. The world’s second largest fresh water lake is fed by direct precipitation and by thousands of streams from Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda and Kenya, all located in the central east of Africa. These agreements gave Egypt and Sudan absolute rights over the river and have thus precipitated serious regional tensions. Nile Water Agreement 1929. called The 1959 Nile Water Agreement which opened a door for Egypt and the Sudan to acquire rights to Nile water resources . There are 25 agencies out of seven departments that are involved in maintaining water quality, but communication and data exchange between agencies is underdeveloped. It is ruled by a Condominium. A dispassionate analysis seems to show, however, that the accord, whether perfect or imperfect, makes a distinct step forward in the establishment of healthy Anglo-Egyptian relations and registers a net gain for Egypt. The 1929 Nile Waters Agreement - signed between Egypt and Great Britain on behalf of Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Sudan. Self-appointed Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic built a 500-room Hotel Intercontinental at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars while millions of his people starved. The regime in Ethiopia claims the depth of the Dam will be 150 meters and the water reservoir behind the Dam could be used to irrigate more than 500,000 hectares of new agricultural lands. But the risk is theirs. Meles’ diplomatic strategy shrouded a clever deterrent military strategy: If Egypt goes for broke and attacks the “Grand Renaissance Dam”, Ethiopia could retaliate by attacking the Aswan dam. War is a source of death. Is the largest recipient of international aid in Africa capable of raising multiple billions of dollars from its citizens for the Dam? It stands empty today. It has, however, remained adamant and consistent upon one point: England will not abandon the Sudan. modification of the 1929 Agreement, which was widely perceived by the Sudanese as being too restrictive of the Sudans obvious claims to fair usage of the water of the Nile. Can the regime in Ethiopia be able to build the largest dam in Africa and other energy projectsresorting to such “desperate measures” as “musical concerts, a lottery and an SMS campaign to raise funds”? For love of white elephants and war of the damned, Water is a source of life. It emphasizes it because it shows that London does not desire to take an unfair advantage of Cairo in dealing with the "reserved points," and more particularly the Sudan. Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam teaches political science at California State University, San Bernardino and is a practicing defense lawyer. The Agreement between Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan of 7th May 1929. . “There are fingers messing with water resources of Sudan and Egypt which are rooted in the mind and body of Ethiopia. It was signed between the United Arab Republic of Egypt and the Republic of Sudan on the Full Utilization of the Nile Waters. If Meles prepared for war by building his dam, his disciples shall surely inherit war. Found insideImplications for Transboundary Water Cooperation Zeray Yihdego, Alistair Rieu-Clarke, Ana Elisa Cascão ... Another treaty that is a major source of dispute is the 1929 Nile Waters Agreement concluded by Britain on behalf of its East ... The 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Nile Water Agreement . modification of the 1929 Agreement, which was widely perceived by the Sudanese as being too restrictive of the Sudan's obvious claims to fair usage of the water of the Nile. The alleged disavowal of the statement of a member of the Saudi royal family and top defense official seems curiously disingenuous after the fact. It’s huge.”. The 1959 Nile Waters Agreement between Egypt and Sudan sought to give the two countries full control and utilization of Nile water by modifying certain aspects of the 1929 agreement. Egyptian officials, negotiators, scholars and media outlets have always considered the 1902, 1929 and 59 Treaties (Nile Water Treaties) as valid and insisted that upstream countries must respect the 55.5 BCM water share allocated to Egypt … In 1959, Egypt and Sudan concluded an agreement that reinforces the 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. Under the terms, Egypt would receive 48 billion cubic metres water annually and Sudan 4 billion cubic metres. The Ethiopian government intends to fill the dam’s immense reservoir in five years. Because this agreement has never been . In concluding his review, Mr. Cory formulated the principles that the present use of Nile water by Egypt and the Sudan should be adopted as vested rights to the natural flow; and that the excess water over and above such vested rights should be divided equally between Egypt and the Sudan. On the back-cover: In 2050, the population in all the Nile Basin countries is expected to be ten times higher than it was in 1950. A spokesman for the regime in power in Ethiopia sought to minimize the importance of the Prince’s statement. August 5, 2010 — In spite of the official stance favouring the 1929/59 Nile water agreements between Egypt & Sudan, the agreements are strongly opposed by most of the . And yet ratifying the CFA without the inclusion of the two principal Nile riparian states, namely Egypt and Sudan, could cement divides than cooperation in the basin. Look back to an operation Egypt did in the mid-late 1970s, I think 1976, when Ethiopia was trying to build a large dam. It argues that they defeat the spirit of the agreement. A treaty they did not sign in some distant past should not bind Kenyans 6.In June 2003, members of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) called for a renegotiation on the Nile Treaty with a view to selling waters of the Nile to . I have consulted engineers of the highest standing, technically and otherwise, and I am convinced that the agreement embodies the Egyptian point of view in regard to the waters of the Nile.". Article II of the agreement provided that 'save with the . Sharing the Nile. Found inside1929 Nile Waters Treaty, art. ... states in its preamble that “the Nile Waters Agreement concluded in 1929 has only regulated a partial use of the natural river and did not cover the future conditions of a fully controlled river supply. President Anwar Sadat in 1978 declared, “We depend upon the Nile100 per cent in our life, so if anyone, at any moment, thinks of depriving us of our life we shall never hesitate to go to war.” Boutros Boutros Gahali, when he was the Egyptian Foreign State Minister (later U.N. Secretary General), confirmed the same sentiment when he asserted “the next war in our region will be over the water of the Nile, not politics.”, “If it comes to a crisis, we will send a jet to bomb the dam and come back in one day, simple as that.”. Is it possible to raise USD$5bn by 2015 from the people of the second poorest country in the world, the vast majority of whom live on less than USD$1? It will be seen from the foregoing excerpts that neither the British experts nor their American colleague said anything about "Egypt's natural and historical rights in the Waters of the Nile and its requirements of agricultural extension." The book examines Cairo's interest in Ethiopia's Blue Nile, the main source of Egypt's water supply. It recounts the history of the dispute, and describes the impact of successive Egyptian regimes' policies toward Ethiopia. The current president of Egypt Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has described the flow of Nile to Egypt as a matter of life and death. It defended the crucial role of the Nile River in the development of Egypt and Sudan since 1894. Egypt has historically adopted an aggressive approach to the flow of the River Nile. In 1964, the Government of Tanganyika openly disavowed the 1929 agreement (“Nyerere Doctrine” which asserts that a newly independent state has the right to “opt in” or selectively succeed to colonial treaties): “The Government of Tanganyika has come to the conclusion that the provisions of the 1929 Agreement purporting to apply to the countries ‘under British Administration’ are not binding on Tanganyika.” On similar grounds, Uganda and Kenya subsequently rejected that agreement. Late last month, Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khalid Bin Sultan fired a shot across the bow from the Arab Water Council in Cairo to let the regime in Ethiopia know that his country takes a dim view of the “Grand Renaissance Dam” under “construction” on the Blue Nile (Abbay) a few miles from Sudan’s eastern border. Found inside104 d) The Third Nile Commission of 1925 The British and Egyptian Governments could not reach an agreement on the basis of the report ... The commission's recommendations provided the basis for the Nile Waters Agreement of May 7, 1929, ... In 1929, the Nile Water Agreement was signed between Egypt and Britain, granting Egypt the right to inspect any upstream Nile-related water projects with the potential to compromise its river flow. The British in 1929 gave Egypt a bigger share of the Nile water, almost three-quarters of the total water volumes, due to its strategic importance to the Queen's empire. The threat of using force has continued. if Ethiopia takes any action to block our right to the Nile waters, there will be no alternative for us but to use force. Badr Abdelatty, Egypt’s ambassador to Germany and former spokesman of the Foreign Ministry, has described the Nile as “a national security issue that can never be compromised on”. The Agreement between Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan of 7 th May 1929. . The agreement states that due to the fact that Egypt was more dependent on the Nile's water, Egypt is therefore allowed more access to it, and had the power to prevent other Nation's that are part of the Nile Water Basin from building on it. Because Egypt has been successful in pressuring multilateral development and investment banks not to fund the project, the regime in Ethiopia has defiantly forged ahead to fund the project itself. There are no any moral, legal as well as political reasons for upstream states to recognize this agreement. All efforts should be made to bring both riparian states onboard. 1929 Nile Waters Agreement between Sudan (then governed by Britain) and Egypt prioritized Egyptian water needs and gave Egypt the right to veto future hydroelectric projects in British colonies (which then included Kenya, Sudan, Tanganyika, and Uganda) along the Nile.18 While it is rejected by the other riparians because they were not party to , called The 1959 Nile Water Agreement which opened a door for Egypt and the Sudan to acquire rights to Nile water resources and for the full utilization of these waters by developing the Aswan High Dam with its huge impact on the biophysical and social . Can a country whose external debt in 2012 exceeded USD$12bn be able to build a $5bn dollar project? Egypt and Sudan 1959 Nile Waters Agreement of 1929 concluded between Egypt and the British Government on behalf of the Sudan. The “Grand Renaissance Dam” is the temporary name for the “Grand Meles Memorial Dam”. the 1929 Nile Agreement between Britain, on behalf of its colonies, and Egypt and the 1959 Nile Agreement between Sudan and Egypt, which in-corporated the main provisions of the 1929 Nile Agreement. Consisted of representatives from Egypt, Britain, and an independent chairman. They do so in the teeth of an impartial neutral expert opinion which did not declare that Egypt had any warrant in law or in fact, in equity or according to custom, to claim as its own all of the "unappropriated" water which might be necessary to give fertility to its unredeemed 1,900,000 acres. The Nile water treaties were agreements between the British (on behalf of their colonies, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda) and Egypt. publishers of In addition, Ethiopia needs to recognise Egypt’s need for water too and use its large dam for the regulation of the Nile – not its blockage. Cairo was favoured over other riparian countries as an important agricultural asset. The water of the Nile has given life to Ethiopians, Egyptians and the people of the Nile basin countries since time immemorial. They also know that actually completing the constructing the dam will be dangerous for their own survival as a regime should regional war break out. A spokesman for the regime in power in Ethiopia sought to minimize the importance of the Prince’s statement by suggesting that the Saudi Ambassador in Addis Ababa had disavowed the Prince’s statement as official policy or a position endorsed by the Saudi government. Two commonly cited agreements in terms of water allocation and the purported rights of riparians include a 1929 Exchange of Notes between His Majesty's Government in the United . Meles likely believed the threat of mutual assured destruction will prevent an actual war while maintaining extremely high levels of regional tensions. The dam is a huge project on the headwaters of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia in Benishangul-Gumuz region, 500 km North West of the capital Addis Ababa and about 32 km east of the border of Sudan. This agreement itself was written in Amharic and signed by the King of Ethiopia. To add insult to injury, the Meles regime has the gall to say that it intends to sell the power from the “Grand Renaissance Dam” to the Sudan, Egypt and the Arabian peninsula once construction is complete. The letters exchanged on May 7, 1929, must be interpreted in the sense of this pronouncement. The current legal and political controversy over the Nile water revolves around the 1929 Nile Waters Agreement (which guarantees disproportionately high volumes of Nile water (85 percent) to Egypt and gave Egypt the right to monitor the Nile flow in the upstream countries and veto powers on all Nile projects upstream) and the 1959 agreement between Britain and Egypt in regards to the use of waters of the River Nile for irrigation purposes which recognized “Egypt’s natural and historic rights in the waters of the Nile and its requirements of agricultural extension…”. In preparation for an African summit meeting of African heads of state scheduled to be held in Tripoli, the ministers of water representing the riparian countries decided to put the subject of the 1929 Nile Water Agreement on the summit's agenda. Exchange of Notes between Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and the Egyptian Government on the Use of Waters of the Nile for Irrigation. This text provides in-depth scientific model adaptation results for hydrology, sediments, benefit sharing, and payment for environmental services based on detailed scientific and experimental work of the Blue Nile Basin. Its practical solution will largely depend upon the good faith with which the accord is carried into effect. Egypt’s threatening stance doesn’t allow compromise because security is directly connected to people’s lives and their survival. The treaties essentially grant most of the Nile's water to Egypt and a much smaller share to Sudan. But that agreement completely ignored the interests of any of the upstream countries, particularly Ethiopia. Egypt would not need the consent of upstream states to undertake water projects in its own territories but could veto projects on any tributaries of the Nile in the upstream countries, including the 43,130 square kilometre Lake Victoria. 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