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Show DEPARTMENT OF STATE INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY COMMISSION UNITED STATES AND MEXICO UNITED STATES SECTION El Paso, Texas May 21, 1942 MEMORANDUM ON PRECEDENTS AS TO EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF INTERNATIONAL WATERS. * This memorandum has been prepared for the use of the Committee of Seven of the Colorado River Basin Committee of Fourteen- Copies of, and extracts from, some one hundred water boundary agreements are contained in the files of the United States Section, International Boundary Commission, United States and Mexico. More than three fourths of that number have reference in-some degree to actual use of international waters,. What was considered the eleven most important* and relevant agreements (some involving several related treaties or diplomatic exchanges) were selected for analysis in this memorandum* The analysis for the most part was taken from a memorandum prepared in 1936 by G. F o Reinhardt, at that time Junior Statistician with the United States Sec- tion, who had made an exhaustive study of the treaties and related papers. Excerpts from treaties were taken from a compilation prepared by the Legal Section of the Commission in 194l* A list of additional treaties bearing on the subject in some degree, is attached* Because of their number and length., no individual analysis of the listed treaties is here attempteds but the data, of course, are available to the Committee, as are the sources from which the present memorandum was prepared« : 1. The .Nile Agreement - Great Britain and Egypt May k* 1929 This agreement sets up certain principles to govern the use of the waters of the Nile by Egypt and the Sudan* The problem is one of a successive river* Egypt, the lower riparian, has for centuries utilized the waters of the Nile 9 while the development of the Sudan is of recent origin. The Sudan was re- conquered by Great Britain and Egypt jointly in the campaigns of 1896-8/ and is today ruled by a con-dominiunw The question of the use of the waters of the Nile is of the utmost importance to the two countries concerned^ without which they are nothing but desertss The agreement provides that the use of Nile" water by the Sudan may enjey such an increase "as does not infringe Egypt:s natural and historical rights in the waters of the Nile and its requirements of agricultural extension*" CChe agreement makes further provision for cooperative measures with regard to the accumulation of hydrometric data and limits the Sudanis freedom of action wrth regard to the construction of works which might affect the flow of the river , *Prepared by Legal Adviser to International Boundary Ceirjtnissioner. -11- |