India’s Treaty Obligations and the Stakes of Water Security By Habib Siddiqui

 

On Monday (August 31), the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague delivered a landmark judgment with far‑reaching implications for South Asia’s water security, ruling that India cannot unilaterally suspend the Indus Waters Treaty. In a unanimous decision, the five‑member tribunal rejected every argument New Delhi has advanced since April 2025 to justify holding the six‑decade‑old agreement “in abeyance,” declaring instead that the Treaty “remains fully in force” and that India “must observe its obligations” under its provisions. The Court reaffirmed that India is bound by the Treaty’s rules governing the design and operation of hydropower projects on rivers flowing into Pakistan, restoring clarity to a framework that India had sought to reinterpret through political declarations rather than legal process.

India has rejected the jurisdiction of the PCA – an intergovernmental court outside the United Nations system – whose mandate New Delhi has accepted in other cases.

The PCA’s latest ruling marks one of the most consequential developments in South Asia’s water diplomacy since the Treaty was signed in Karachi on 19 September 1960. Negotiated with World Bank mediation and endorsed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President Ayub Khan, the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) has long been celebrated as a rare example of cooperation between India and Pakistan. It divided the six major rivers of the Indus Basin into two categories: India received exclusive control over the Eastern Rivers – the Beas, Ravi, and Sutlej – while Pakistan was granted exclusive control over the Western Rivers – the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab. In effect, the Treaty partitioned the rivers rather than sharing their waters.

For more than six decades, this arrangement survived wars, crises, and political upheavals. Yet the Treaty has come under unprecedented strain in recent years, culminating in India’s 2025 declaration that it was placing the Treaty in “abeyance.” The PCA’s ruling directly rejects this claim, reaffirming that the Treaty remains fully in force and that neither party can unilaterally suspend, terminate, or redefine its obligations. This determination is profoundly significant for Pakistan, whose agricultural economy and national water security depend on uninterrupted flows from the Western Rivers.

As I noted during my tv interview with AsiaOneNews (Perspectiva), the PCA’s decision restores clarity to a Treaty that India had attempted to reinterpret through political rhetoric. New Delhi’s assertion that “blood and water cannot flow together” may resonate domestically, but it carries no legal weight. The Court has made it unambiguously clear that political declarations cannot override treaty commitments. Any modification or termination of the IWT requires mutual agreement through a new treaty, not unilateral action. This ruling protects Pakistan from upstream decisions that could jeopardize its access to the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab – rivers that sustain more than 80 percent of Pakistan’s agriculture and millions of rural livelihoods.

Equally important is the Court’s affirmation that Pakistan acted within the Treaty’s dispute‑resolution framework by seeking arbitration. India has long insisted that disagreements over hydroelectric projects such as Ratle and Kishenganga must be addressed exclusively through the Neutral Expert (NE) mechanism. But the Treaty’s architecture is clear: technical questions fall under Annexure F and go to the NE, while legal questions involving interpretation or application of the Treaty fall under Annexure G and go to the Court of Arbitration. Pakistan’s objections to Ratle – concerning pondage, spillway height, intake elevation, and the potential for drawdown flushing – are legal questions about treaty compliance, not mere engineering differences. The PCA’s ruling validates Pakistan’s position and rejects India’s claim that arbitration was improperly invoked.

India’s refusal to participate in the proceedings does not invalidate the Court’s jurisdiction. Under international treaty law, once a tribunal is properly constituted, non‑participation by one party does not nullify its authority. The PCA’s ruling is legally binding under the IWT, and India remains obligated to comply with its determinations. This creates a significant strategic constraint for New Delhi. While India may continue to assert its political narrative, it now faces a clear judicial interpretation that contradicts its position. This divergence increases diplomatic pressure on India, especially in international forums where Pakistan has portrayed India as an upper riparian power attempting to rewrite a long‑standing agreement unilaterally.Pakistan has gone further, describing India’s declaration of “abeyance” as an existential threat to its water security.

In this context, India must also reflect on the broader implications of its stance. It cannot credibly reject the jurisdiction of the PCA only when a verdict goes against its interests, while embracing the same institution in cases where its rulings are favorable. Such selective acceptance undermines India’s own legal consistency and exposes a troubling hypocrisy: a major state cannot claim respect for international norms on one day and dismiss them the next. If India wishes to be seen as a responsible global actor, it must apply the same standards of treaty fidelity and institutional respect across all cases, not only those that serve its strategic preferences.

If New Delhi is serious about its global reputation – already under scrutiny due to widespread reports of human rights violations against minorities, particularly in the disputed Jammu & Kashmir – it cannot afford to be seen as an unreliable treaty partner. India’s relationships with nearly all its neighbors are strained, and across South Asia, it is increasingly viewed not as a cooperative regional leader but as a domineering power. This perception is not accidental; it is the cumulative result of decades of unilateral actions, coercive diplomacy, and disregard for the interests of smaller neighbors. A country aspiring to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council must demonstrate respect for international law, treaty obligations, and the sovereign rights of its neighbors. Honoring the IWT is therefore not merely a legal requirement – it is a commitment to regional peace, ecological sustainability, and moral responsibility.

Bangladesh’s experience with the Farakka Barrage remains one of the clearest illustrations of India’s troubling pattern of behavior. Constructed in 1972 inside West Bengal, the Barrage was designed to divert 1,800 cubic meters per second of water from the Ganges to flush sediment from Kolkata’s harbor. After nearly 90 fruitless meetings of the Indo‑Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission (JRC), Bangladesh reluctantly agreed to a 41‑day trial operation in 1975, under the explicit assurance that India would not operate the feeder canal until a final water‑sharing agreement was reached. Bangladesh was promised 40,000 cusecs during the dry season. India did not honor these commitments. Instead, it diverted water unilaterally, worsening dry‑season scarcity and contributing to monsoon flooding. The Barrage has since been called a “Death Trap” by Bangladeshis, symbolizing India’s disregard for downstream impacts and its willingness to deceive a smaller neighbor. This history is well remembered across the region, and it casts a long shadow over India’s current posture on the Indus Waters Treaty.

The restrictions placed on the Ratle Hydroelectric Project illustrate the practical implications of the PCA ruling. The Court has ordered India not to concrete the dam wall or intake structure above specified levels – a critical safeguard for Pakistan. Once these components are built, they cannot be easily modified or undone. By freezing construction at disputed elevations, the PCA ensures that Pakistan’s concerns will be addressed before India proceeds further. Ratle is not just another run‑of‑the‑river project; its design features could allow India to manipulate flows during low‑flow periods, creating leverage over Pakistan’s irrigation cycles. The Court’s intervention prevents irreversible structural changes and reinforces Pakistan’s hydrological security.

This ruling also sets a precedent for future Indian projects on the Western Rivers. India must now incorporate treaty‑compliant engineering from the outset, knowing that deviations will be subject to international scrutiny. The PCA’s decision signals that India cannot bypass oversight simply by rejecting arbitration. The Treaty’s mechanisms remain operational, and Pakistan retains the right to invoke them when it believes India’s designs violate treaty limits.

The stakes for Pakistan could not be higher. The Indus Basin is the country’s lifeline. More than four‑fifths of Pakistan’s agriculture depends on predictable flows from the Western Rivers. Even minor disruptions can affect wheat, rice, sugarcane, and cotton production, threatening food security and rural incomes. Millions of households rely on stable water availability not only for farming but also for livestock, fisheries, and daily consumption. When water becomes unreliable, communities face declining incomes, food insecurity, and in some cases, forced migration. Water scarcity has historically been linked to social tensions, and in Pakistan’s context – where rural poverty is widespread – any upstream manipulation can exacerbate instability.

Climate change amplifies these vulnerabilities. Pakistan is already experiencing unpredictable glacial melt, erratic monsoons, and extreme weather events. The Indus Basin is one of the world’s most climate‑stressed river systems. In such a fragile environment, any upstream intervention – whether through design features that allow temporary storage or operational decisions that alter flows – compounds Pakistan’s risks. Sudden releases during wet periods or reductions during dry months can undermine Pakistan’s flood management systems and irrigation planning.

Pakistan’s path forward must be multi‑layered. Legal mechanisms have proven effective, but diplomacy remains essential. Structured dialogue – possibly with third‑party facilitation – can help reduce escalation and restore confidence in the Treaty’s processes. At the same time, Pakistan must urgently strengthen its domestic water‑storage and management capacity. Limited storage infrastructure, aging canals, groundwater depletion, and climate‑induced variability make Pakistan vulnerable even when flows are uninterrupted. Investing in new reservoirs, rehabilitating canals, regulating groundwater extraction, and promoting climate‑resilient agriculture are essential steps toward long‑term resilience.

Last Words:

As we reflect on the PCA’s ruling and the broader trajectory of water politics in South Asia, it is impossible to ignore a sobering truth: the wars of the future will not be fought merely over territory or ideology, but increasingly over water. Across the world, from the Nile Basin to the Mekong, from the Tigris–Euphrates system to the Indus, water scarcity is emerging as the defining geopolitical fault line of the twenty‑first century. Climate change, glacial retreat, erratic monsoons, and exploding populations are converging to make water the most contested resource on the planet. In such an era, the stability of regions – and the survival of millions – will depend on whether nations respect international laws, honor signed treaties, and abide by the verdicts of arbitration bodies entrusted with resolving disputes.

If powerful states begin to treat treaties as optional and arbitration rulings as irrelevant, the world will slide toward a dangerous precedent in which might makes right and upstream nations can unilaterally choke off the lifelines of downstream communities. This is not merely a legal concern; it is a moral one. When a country controls the headwaters of a river system, it holds in its hands the fate of farmers, families, and entire ecosystems downstream. To disregard that responsibility is to play with the lives and livelihoods of millions who depend on predictable flows for their crops, their food, and their very survival.

For this reason, the international community must move toward stronger global norms that guarantee the rights of lower riparian states. Water, unlike oil or minerals, is not a commodity that can be stockpiled or substituted. It is the essence of life. Any international river system must be governed by principles that ensure equitable and sustainable use, not unilateral diversion or manipulation. Dams and barrages that fundamentally alter ecosystems, destroy fisheries, displace communities, or deprive downstream nations of their rightful share should not be treated as symbols of national pride, but as potential instruments of human suffering. No people should ever have to live under the shadow of a dam or barrage that becomes a curse – stealing their water, destroying their crops, and eroding their future.

The PCA’s ruling is more than a legal verdict – it is a reminder that the future of peace in South Asia depends on the choices made now. Water can be a source of conflict, or it can be a bridge of cooperation. The world will be safer if nations choose the latter.

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Dr Habib Siddiqui is the author of several books, including ‘Modi-fied’ India: the Transformation of a Nation (Peter Lang, 2026), and Bangladesh: a Polarized and Divided Nation? (Amazon.com, 2021)

Snake Skin #Poem & #Painting by Nikos Laios

 

Under a midday sky
The palm trees sway
Slowly and sweat drips
Onto the yellow sand
And the day is hot
And the ocean
Is dead calm.

Lying
On a towel
I stare up
At the blazing sun,
And for a moment
I lose myself in the sun
To the rhythmical
Sounds of crashing
Waves on the beach,
And my soul suddenly
Feels jarred and dislocated
Floating free.

Then I see the illusion
Of life peeling off like a dry
Cracked snake skin
Falling on a desert floor
Revealing a black glistening
Nothingness filled with stars
And a black hole devouring time,
Then I wake suddenly
With the taste of fragility
Aware that everything
We have built
Rests on a thin
Layer of
Illusion.

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With a digital painting from Nikos Laios

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Check Nikos Laios' eBOOK, HERE!

 

The glove of power by Jennifer Stephenson

 

 

It is disturbing to think that an immigration officer being handed a glove that can deliver an electric shock. Not because the device is necessarily the most lethal instrument in the government’s arsenal. It is not. The problem is what it says about the direction of American law enforcement: when an agency entrusted with enforcing immigration law begins to look increasingly like a domestic security force, the addition of an electrified glove is less a technological innovation than a political symbol.

ICE has now awarded a $16.7 million contract for 6,000 pairs of electric-shock gloves, despite objections from lawmakers and civil-liberties advocates. The government describes them as “conductive distraction and de-escalation” devices. That is the sort of phrase bureaucracies invent when they want something potentially ugly to sound reassuring.

One can imagine the procurement meeting. Someone asks whether agents really need gloves capable of shocking people. Someone else explains that the gloves are not weapons but safety equipment. Another official probably nods gravely and writes down “de-escalation.”

And there we have the problem. A democratic government should be extremely cautious about giving its agents new ways to inflict pain. It should be even more cautious when those agents operate in communities, enter homes, detain people and exercise enormous power over individuals who may have little practical ability to resist.

ICE insists that the gloves are intended for difficult confrontations and officer safety. Fine. Police officers sometimes face genuinely dangerous situations. They deserve equipment that protects them. But the legitimate question is not whether an officer should have means of protecting himself. It is whether an institution already under intense scrutiny for its use of force should be expanding the menu of coercive tools before establishing overwhelming public confidence that those tools will be used properly.

That distinction matters. The danger of authoritarianism rarely arrives wearing a sign saying WELCOME TO THE DICTATORSHIP. It arrives through procurement contracts, administrative rules, expanded powers and seemingly technical improvements. Each individual change can be defended as reasonable. Together they can produce something profoundly unreasonable.

The electric glove is therefore important not because it turns an ICE officer into a storm trooper. It does not. Nor does every ICE officer become a thug simply by putting one on. That would be lazy caricature.

The concern is institutional. When an agency increasingly resembles a militarized domestic force, equipment begins to influence mentality. The symbolism of the uniform, tactical gear and weaponry matters. So does the expectation that confrontation, rather than restraint, is the normal answer to resistance. Critics have already described ICE as acquiring the characteristics of a paramilitary organization, with concerns about accountability and oversight.

America should understand the historical lesson here. Praetorian forces are not created overnight. They emerge when governments gradually become comfortable giving particular agents extraordinary authority and then become less comfortable questioning how that authority is exercised.

The republic does not become authoritarian because someone buys a glove. It becomes vulnerable when nobody thinks the glove is worth arguing about. There is a profound difference between law enforcement and enforcement without meaningful restraint. The first serves the law. The second eventually serves whoever controls the machinery of enforcement.

That is why the image of the electrified glove should make Americans uncomfortable. A democracy should want its police to be feared by criminals because they enforce the law, not feared by ordinary people because the state has given them increasingly ingenious ways to make citizens obey. The glove may be marketed as nonlethal. The warning it carries is anything but.

Puppi & Caesar #51 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

The EU’s Iceland setback by Thanos Kalamidas

The European Union has just been handed another small country-sized warning and Brussels would be wise not to dismiss it as another eccentric Icelandic obsession with fish.

By 52.8 percent to 47.2 percent, Icelanders rejected restarting negotiations on EU membership. It was a narrow vote, but politically it lands with the force of a much larger rebuke. The referendum was not technically about joining the EU. It was about reopening the door. Icelanders have now decided that, for the moment, they would rather keep the door firmly shut.

And if Brussels is looking for someone to blame, it should look beyond Reykjavik. Ursula von der Leyen is not personally responsible for Iceland’s fishing quotas, sovereignty concerns or the peculiar emotional attachment of an island nation to its waters. But after years at the summit of the European Commission, she has become the human face of a European project that increasingly struggles to explain what it is for and why citizens should trust it.

That is the larger problem. The EU likes to describe itself as a geopolitical heavyweight. Yet its political language often sounds like an administrative memo. It speaks fluently about regulations, competitiveness, strategic autonomy and resilience, while ordinary Europeans worry about prices, housing, jobs, migration, security and whether their children will enjoy a better life than they did.

Icelanders were offered the argument that a more unstable world made European integration more attractive. There was logic to it. Russia, Arctic tensions and Donald Trump’s extraordinary pressure over Greenland have transformed the strategic environment around the North Atlantic. Iceland, with no standing army, has every reason to think seriously about security.

But geopolitical anxiety is not automatically a sales pitch for Brussels. The EU assumed that instability would make Icelanders run toward Europe. Instead, many ran toward sovereignty. That should make von der Leyen and her colleagues uncomfortable.

The European Commission has spent years presenting itself as the guardian of European values, social standards and international influence. Yet Europe’s economic performance has too often been anaemic, its social agenda fragmented, and its foreign policy compromised by internal divisions. The EU wants to be a geopolitical actor but frequently behaves like 27 governments sharing a filing cabinet.

Von der Leyen’s defenders will argue that these problems cannot possibly be reduced to one Commission president. Of course they cannot. Europe’s structural weaknesses predate her. National governments remain responsible for much of what happens inside the bloc.

But leadership matters. And when a political project repeatedly loses its emotional connection with citizens, its leadership cannot simply blame misinformation, nationalism or provincialism.

Iceland is particularly revealing because it is hardly an anti-European backwater. It already enjoys extensive access to the European single market and participates in Schengen. Its voters were not choosing between Europe and isolation. They were choosing how much European integration they wanted.

And they chose less. That is the uncomfortable message. The EU cannot demand that countries surrender pieces of sovereignty while offering only spreadsheets in return. It cannot tell Europeans that deeper integration is inevitable and then wonder why voters become suspicious. Nor can Brussels assume that every crisis automatically strengthens the European idea.

Sometimes crises expose its weaknesses. Iceland’s rejection should therefore be treated not as a defeat for Iceland, but as a referendum on Brussels’ ability to persuade. The result is narrow. The warning is not.

Europe does not merely need better policies. It needs a convincing reason for people to believe in the European project again. And that, more than Iceland’s fish, is the catch Brussels has failed to land.

To be lost #Poem by Abigail George

 

I help my father to the bathroom
His brown hands are soft & warm, two suns,
two volcano lovers, two brown eggs, two birds. He sits,
perched falcon-like, on the toilet seat. There are many muscles
in the human body, he says. You can see the creation
of God with every movement of each muscle, he continues.
I make conversation to preserve his dignity
but I am also genuinely interested in what he has to say.
He is like sea-glass in my hands, fragile, breakable
One, Two, Three, stand, I say, hold onto the door
I pull up the adult diapers, his shirt is damp & stained with food
His body spills into my patient hands. I am gentle,
concern in my eyes, the brown eyes that he gave me.
I help him put his pajama pants on and we go and eat Sunday lunch
I arrange an apron over his chest, tuck it in his shirt. I hand him a plate,
Oros in a mug. Before I eat, I go to his bedroom. The room where my parents
sleep in separate beds. I place linens where the sheets are wet like dew, I make
up his bed, and fold up the blankets. Do you want to watch Joel Osteen, I ask?
I stand in the doorway, watching the ocean that is my family.
No, he says. I am fine here.

The Ranucci test by Maddalena Conti

Italy has seen this movie before. The scenery changes, the politicians change, the slogans change, but the plot remains remarkably familiar: an investigative journalist becomes inconvenient, the public broadcaster discovers an administrative reason for removing him, and everyone is invited to believe that politics has absolutely nothing to do with it.

RAI’s decision to remove Sigfrido Ranucci after nine years presenting Report may be perfectly defensible on paper. Broadcasters are entitled to change presenters. Programmes need renewal. Young journalists deserve opportunities. RAI says it wants to strengthen investigative journalism and bring in new talent. Nothing sinister there.

Except that politics rarely operates on paper alone. Ranucci has spent years doing precisely what investigative journalists are supposed to do: asking uncomfortable questions, following money, examining power and irritating people who would much rather not be examined. His programme has repeatedly scrutinised the political establishment, including Giorgia Meloni's government and figures around it. Now, suddenly, the man at the centre of one of Italy's most influential investigative programmes is being moved aside amid a political storm that has already become impossible to separate from the decision.

That does not prove Meloni personally ordered his removal. It would be irresponsible to claim it does. But democracy is not merely about proving who made a telephone call. It is also about recognising patterns.

The timing is extraordinary. Last year, a bomb exploded outside Ranucci's home. Meloni and politicians across the political spectrum rightly condemned the attack. Then came the extraordinary revelation that businessman Valter Lavitola allegedly organised the bombing, with investigators examining whether the bizarre scheme was intended to increase Ranucci's security or boost his public profile. There is no evidence that Ranucci knew about the plot.

Yet somehow the journalist became the subject of political suspicion rather than simply the victim of an extraordinary criminal affair. And now he is gone from Report.

That is where the smell of revenge begins to linger. Not necessarily revenge in the crude sense of Meloni sitting in Palazzo Chigi with a red pen marked “Ranucci”. Politics is usually subtler than that. Institutional pressure does not require a dictator's telephone call. Sometimes all that is needed is a political climate in which everybody understands which journalists are considered troublesome and which are considered useful.

The danger is not that Meloni has suddenly abolished press freedom. The danger is something more sophisticated: the gradual normalisation of a public broadcaster becoming uncomfortable with journalism that makes the government uncomfortable.

And that matters because RAI is not just another television company. It is a public institution. Its independence is therefore measured not by how kindly it treats friendly journalism, but by how much room it gives hostile journalism.

The real test for Meloni is consequently not whether she personally liked Ranucci. Leaders are not required to like journalists. Quite the opposite. A healthy democracy needs journalists capable of making prime ministers furious.

The question is whether Italy's government can tolerate a broadcaster whose journalists investigate it without fear. If Ranucci was removed solely because RAI genuinely wanted a new generation to lead Report, the decision will eventually stand on its merits.

But if the message to Italian journalism is that persistent scrutiny carries a professional price, then Ranucci's removal will become something much larger than a television reshuffle. It will become a warning. And journalists understand warnings better than most people.

Berserk Alert! #125 #Cartoon by Tony Zuvela

 

Tony Zuvela and his view of the world around us in a constant berserk alert!
For more Berserk Alert! HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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2nd opinion! 26#15 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Seriously, a human hater self-centred agoraphobic in quarantine!
I think you’ll need a second opinion after this.

For more 2nd opinion, quarantined!, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Linking Development with Migration The Economics of Prevention By Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic

Some ideas are born in institutions. Others leave the institution with the people who first developed them. The idea of a Diaspora Hedge Fund belongs to the latter category.

Its origins go back to the formative years of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) in Vienna in the mid-1990s. At the time, ICMPD was a rather small institution, still exceptionally ambitious in its attempt to understand migration beyond the narrow confines of border control. In the less-than-100 m² office with only 4 staff-members, just across the street from the world’s oldest diplomatic training centre — the Vienna Diplomatic Academy — I had the privilege of working alongside its founder, Jonas Widgren, a top Swedish governmental official, as well as Willibald Pahr, then already a retired Austrian Foreign Minister, one Swiss official, and a technical secretary. One of the few guests who frequented our premises in those early days was a close friend of Jonas; James N. Purcell (then Director-General of the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM)).

The informal but content intensive discussions of those early years ranged widely: migration control and repatriation, labour markets and development, the economics of prevention, and the question of how migration could be addressed not only through managing its consequences but also through tackling some of its underlying socio-economic, developmental and demographic causes.

One small anecdote from that period remained particularly memorable.

The Economics of Prevention

In the mid-1990s, Slovenia was reportedly apprehending approximately 3,000 Romanian nationals annually as some attempted to cross its tiny stretch of border with Italy illegally, on their way to (a hoped-for better life in) Western Europe.The administrative costs of apprehension, processing, documentation and repatriation were estimated at around one thousand six hundred Deutsche Marks per person. The resulting expenditure therefore approached almost five million Deutsche Marks a year (from a single country) — an amount which, adjusted for inflation and purchasing power parity in Romania, would be at least three times higher in today's money.

The significance of the example was not the precise calculation. Nor was it an argument against border management or the sovereign right of states to regulate migration.It illustrated a broader question that arose repeatedly in those early discussions: what might be called the Economics of Prevention — the economic irrationality of spending substantial resources on managing the consequences of migration while devoting comparatively less attention to the economic conditions that generate migration in the first place. Or, simply, it was about linking migration to development.

Would some of the resources spent on apprehension and repatriation produce a greater long-term effect if invested instead in socio-economic prevention: employment, vocational education, local enterprise, agriculture or infrastructure in regions of origin? Hence, from a start, it was clear: Repatriation addresses a consequence; prevention addresses a condition.

This was only one of many observations and anecdotes that shaped the thinking of those early, formative ICMPD years. But it helped reinforce a proposition that would remain with me: decouple migration policy and development policy and both will fail, sooner or later.

From Migration Control to Migration Capitalisation

Much has changed in migration policy since those early years of huge migratory movements in Europe, driven by political changes on its eastern and southern flanks. For decades, the dominant emphasis was not demographic renewal but on migration control: borders, visas, irregular migration, return and readmission. This gradually, (esp after Maastricht and Copenhagen) evolved into a broader approach of migration management, encompassing legal mobility, integration, labour migration, develop-mental FORAs’ cooperation and more comprehensive international coordination.

But there is arguably a third stage still waiting to be fully developed: migration capitalisation. The term is broader than finance. Even when forced, migration does not move people alone. It also moves capital, knowledge, professional experience, entrepreneurship, technology, (ethno-)networks and institutional memory.

Diaspora communities therefore represent considerably more than a source of remittances. The question is how these dispersed resources can be organised so that they contribute systematically to productive development.

This is where the idea of the Diaspora Hedge Fund returns.

The proposition was never simply to collect diaspora money. It was to create an institutional mechanism through which relatively modest individual contributions could be pooled, professionally managed and connected with the leverage and governance standards of established multilateral development-finance institutions.

In its simplest form, the architecture would bring together four elements: (i) diaspora capital; (ii) multilateral development finance; (iii) national development priorities; and (iv) professionally governed investment.

The government of the country of origin would establish priorities and provide appropriate guarantees. The diaspora would provide catalytic capital, potentially doubling it through an appropriate developmental bank or entity — e.g. EU/ropean, international or regional, such as OFID, etc. A participating developmental-finance institution would undertake due diligence, apply fiduciary and procurement standards and, where appropriate, leverage or match the diaspora contribution. Productive enterprises and local communities would ultimately benefit from the investment.

The essential ingredient is trust.

Diaspora communities often possess both the willingness and the capacity to invest in their countries of origin. What is frequently missing is an institutional framework that gives them confidence that their money will be professionally managed, transparently allocated and protected from political interference. The idea is therefore less about creating another financial product than about creating an institutional bridge between resources that already exist – and, above all, about cultural and socio-economic confidence-building(especially in post-war recovery societies).

From Remittances to Strategic Investment

The original Hedge Fund idea emerged before the terminology of migration capitalisation had taken shape.

At its heart was a simple proposition: remittances should not be regarded only as private transfers supporting household consumption — and mostly flowing through informal networks among family members and people with other direct bonds. They could, under the right conditions, become part of a much broader pool of organised diaspora capital capable of supporting productive and strategic investment.

The distinction matters. Remittances are already among the largest and most reliable financial flows associated with migration. Yet they are predominantly fragmented across millions of individual transactions and household decisions. Their social and economic importance is undeniable, but their potential as organised developmental capital remains largely underutilised, if used at all.

The challenge is therefore not to redirect remittances by administrative fiat. It is to create an attractive and trustworthy mechanism through which diaspora members who wish to invest can do so collectively, professionally and with a clear developmental purpose (even if their contributions is uneven and/or sporadic). That was the intuition behind the Diaspora Hedge Fund.

An Idea That Travelled

The idea did not remain confined to the European migration-policy environment. Soon after my years at ICMPD, my own professional path moved to academia, research and international policy engagement. Jonas Widgren, whose contribution to European migration policy (incl. III Pillar of the EU’s Justice-Home Affairs policy) was pioneering, passed away prematurely. ICMPD itself evolved, as did the migration agenda.

The question, however, remained. Over the following decades, the same underlying idea resurfaced in university teaching, research, public events, policy papers and discussions with governments and international organisations.

It was present, in different forms, in my engagement with the United Nations system, particularly UNODC, and in my work surrounding the Palermo Convention negotiations, signing and its implementation (as well as few other fundamental international instruments such as the UN Corruption convention, etc.). Some of these reflections subsequently found their way into my numerous writings and into my own book, published in 2025, examining the Palermo Treaty system, and other fundamental instruments of the contemporary International Criminal Law regime.

The same broader question also appeared in my engagement with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), including policy work that contributed to discussions reflected in an OSCE Ministerial Council process. The institutional settings changed; the underlying question did not:How can migration become not merely something to be managed, but also a resource for development?

The discussion travelled beyond Europe as well: Over the years, I had opportunities to discuss aspects of the concept with senior representatives of international organisations and institutions, including Anita Gradin, the first Swedish EU Commissioner (for JHA); Donald J. Johnston, former Secretary-General of the OECD; Surin Pitsuwan, former Secretary-General of ASEAN; Sheel Kant Sharma, former Secretary-General of SAARC; Moussa Faki Mahamat, former Chairperson of the African Union Commission; and Albert Ramdin, now Secretary General of the Organization of American States; as well as Nasser Kamel, Secretary General of the Union for the Mediterranean, Senator Pascal Allizard, then Vice-President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and its Special Rapporteur for Mediterranean issues, and a number of other officials engaged over the years in the Barcelona Process and Euro-Mediterranean (EU) platforms, including John Bruton, former Irish Prime Minister, to name but a few.

These conversations, in different moments, institutional and regional contexts, reinforced a broader observation: countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and South-East Europe confront remarkably similar circumstances — substantial diasporas, significant remittance flows, persistent development needs and insufficient mechanisms for transforming dispersed private resources into strategic development investment.

Particularly significant were my engagements in Jeddah, where I conducted invited seminars for both the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). During that period, I also had substantive discussions with Dr. Bandar M. H. Hajjar, then President of the Islamic Development Bank, about connecting diaspora resources with multilateral development finance.

These exchanges were important not because they produced an immediate institutional solution, but because they demonstrated that the original question raised in the early ICMPD discussions had a relevance far beyond European migration policy.

From remittances to strategic investment was becoming a question of international development, social geography and demographics,  not merely migration management.

The Diaspora Hedge Fund

The proposed Diaspora Hedge Fund should not be understood as a conventional hedge fund in the financial-market sense. The name I gave it reflects the original concept; the substance is an organised mechanism for transforming dispersed diaspora savings into professionally governed development investment.

The basic architecture is deliberately straightforward. Diaspora members contribute voluntarily to a professionally managed pool. A participating multilateral development institution evaluates and, where appropriate, leverages or matches those resources. Governments identify development priorities and provide the necessary institutional framework and guarantees. Projects are selected according to transparent socio-economic and socio-geographic criteria — including tripartite participation and decision-making — and implemented under professional financial and procurement standards.

The objective is not to replace development assistance, foreign direct investment or existing development-finance mechanisms. It is to add something that has often been missing: a structured (confidence-building) connection between diaspora capital and national development priorities.

A small South-East European state provides one possible illustration: More than 220,000 documented Bosnian citizens reside in Austria alone. If each contributed only ten euros — roughly the price of a coffee and a slice of cake — the resulting capital would already exceed two million euros from a single diaspora community in a single country, monthly. (Rough estimates project a volume of some 25 million euros for Bosnians from their European diaspora alone, while, for example, the Moroccan diaspora would be ten times larger.)

The point, of course, is not the precise amount — since both the sending and receiving countries are relatively small. The point is that development capital does not necessarily begin with billions.It can begin with participation and trust.

If such pooled capital were subsequently leveraged (doubled) through an established development-finance institution, professionally appraised and directed toward productive investment, relatively modest individual contributions could acquire considerably greater economic significance.

The small SEE country – with a prospect for € 600 million annually, could therefore serve as one possible pilot. But the concept is not specifically Bosnian. Its potential application extends to countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, MENA and South-East Europe — indeed, anywhere substantial diasporas, significant remittance flows and persistent development needs coexist.

Why Revisit It Now?

There is a certain irony in revisiting an idea after almost three decades: When the original discussions took place in Vienna, the language of migration capitalisation was not yet established, and the institutional infrastructure for diaspora investment was considerably less developed.

Today, the environment is different. Diaspora communities are larger, more professionally connected and increasingly sophisticated financially. A variety of communication tools — instant and practically cost-free — together with digital finance, have transformed the possibilities for collective investment. Multilateral development banks possess sophisticated instruments for project appraisal, risk management and blended finance. And the developmental significance of diaspora networks is now much more widely recognised, while the volumes and conditionalities attached to traditional donor funding are increasingly difficult to meet.

The question is therefore no longer whether diaspora communities possess resources. They do. Nor is the question whether development-finance institutions possess the instruments and expertise to mobilise capital (of others). They do.

The more pressing question is whether these two realities can finally be connected through an institution capable of commanding the confidence of diaspora investors while remaining aligned with the developmental priorities of countries of origin.

That was the intuition behind the discussions in the formative days of ICMPD.

It is also why my idea has survived successive changes of institution, profession and international context: from a small office in Vienna in the 1990s, through academia, the UN and UNODC, the EU (JHA), the OSCE, the OECD, the African Union, ASEAN and SAARC, the OIC and the Islamic Development Bank, and through conversations with policymakers and development-finance leaders in different parts of the world, the idea has been discussed, tested and gradually refined.

It is therefore not presented here as a new idea. Quite the opposite. It is an old idea that has had nearly three decades to mature.

The purpose of revisiting the Diaspora Hedge Fund is not to add another grand theory to the already crowded field of migration policy (proposals). It is more modest — and perhaps more practical: to recover a pioneering idea from the formative days of European migration-policy cooperation and ask whether today's institutional and financial environment is finally capable of giving it practical form.

Migration control remains necessity. Migration management remains indispensable. But if migration is also a source of capital, knowledge, entrepreneurship and transnational commitment, then the next step should be to capitalise migration.And if remittances can become organised diaspora (socio-economic) capital, then the next step is to move from remittances to strategic investment.

The Diaspora Hedge Fund is proposed as one possible institutional bridge between those two (spatial and social) worlds.An idea conceived in Vienna in the 1990s may, after all, have arrived at the right moment – in a world of increasingly (dis-) United Nations.

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Anis H. Bajrektarevic, Vienna, Author is chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies, Vienna, Austria. He authored three books: FB – Geopolitics of Technology (published by the New York’s Addleton Academic Publishers); Geopolitics – Europe 100 years later (DB, Europe), and the just released Geopolitics – Energy – Technology by the German publisher LAP. No Asian century is his forthcoming book, scheduled for later this year. 

The adult and the bully by Marja Heikkinen

The tragedy of the current USA-Canadian tariff war is that one side still appears to believe this is a negotiation between governments, while the other increasingly behaves as though it is a personal contest of wills.

Mark Carney, for all his political limitations, understands the distinction. Donald Trump seems determined to erase it.

Carney has approached the confrontation like a man trying to stop a car from crashing into a wall. He has negotiated, offered compromises, sought exemptions and repeatedly insisted that Canada wants a workable relationship with its largest trading partner. Yet he has also drawn a line around Canadian sovereignty, refusing to accept a deal that requires Canada to behave like a subordinate rather than a sovereign country. The latest collapse of negotiations has left Canada preparing retaliation as Washington threatens still higher tariffs.

That is what makes this dispute so revealing. Trump does not seem particularly interested in the traditional language of diplomacy, where two countries bargain, compromise and occasionally discover that neither gets everything it wants. He appears to regard disagreement itself as an insult. A government that says no is not merely negotiating badly; in the Trumpian universe, it is being disobedient.

And Canada has committed the unforgivable offence of refusing to bend the knee. There is something deeply personal about Trump's approach to international trade. Tariffs are presented not simply as economic instruments but as weapons of humiliation. Countries must demonstrate submission. Leaders must praise him. Negotiators must concede. Allies must prove their loyalty by accepting whatever Washington demands.

That is not statecraft. It is transactional narcissism with a flag attached. Calling Trump “seriously sick” is tempting, but it is also beside the point unless one is speaking metaphorically about his political pathology. The more useful observation is that his governing style is extraordinarily dependent on personal dominance, grievance and the appearance of victory. He needs opponents to retreat because retreat validates his power. When they refuse, escalation becomes the answer.

That makes him dangerous not necessarily because he is irrational, but because his version of rationality is so narrowly centred on himself. A tariff that damages USA consumers can still be politically useful if Trump can portray it as punishment inflicted on a foreign government. A trade concession that would benefit both countries can become unacceptable if accepting it does not allow him to claim victory. The economics become secondary to the theatre.

Canada therefore faces an unpleasant reality. Carney can be the adult in the room, but adults cannot conduct a negotiation alone. The United States and Canada are deeply integrated economies. US factories depend on Canadian inputs; Canadian industries depend on US markets. A tariff war is therefore less like two strangers throwing stones at each other and more like two neighbours setting fire to opposite ends of the same house. Analysts are already warning of job losses and recession risks.

The real damage, however, may be larger than the tariff bill. For generations, Canada assumed that whatever disagreements arose with Washington, the basic relationship was secure. That assumption is now disappearing. Canadians are reconsidering American products, US travel and even the psychological comfort of having the United States as an unquestioned partner.

Carney may eventually have to make concessions. Politics is the art of surviving reality, not winning arguments. But there is one concession Canada should never make: accepting that friendship with USA requires obedience to Donald Trump. The adult can keep extending the hand. But eventually, the adult has to stop shaking a fist at a closed door and start building another one.