In a letter sent to the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Sunday, Egypt reiterated its rejection of unilateral Ethiopian actions on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Last week, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said construction of GERD will be completed by December and that the amount of water in the reservoir will increase to 70-71 billion cubic metres (bcm) from the current 57 bcm.

In its letter, Egypt described Ahmed’s statements as “completely unacceptable” and a threat to regional stability, and pointed out that Addis Ababa’s unilateral policies breach international law and the Declaration of Principles agreement signed between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia in 2015.

Abbas Sharaki, professor of geology and water resources at Cairo University, said Ethiopia had begun the fifth filling of the GERD reservoir on 17 July, coinciding with the rainy season and threatening downstream countries because of the huge amount of water being withheld.

Ethiopia, he noted, opened the dam’s upper spillways last month to allow the release of some 250 million cubic metres of water per day into the Nile, only to close them four days later. “If the spillways are not reopened the fifth filling will have to stop before it reaches the top of the middle wall (640 metres) to prevent overflow,” said Sharaki.

A Foreign Ministry statement released after the UNSC letter was sent said Addis Ababa’s policies impede regional aspirations to boost cooperation among states and instead plant the seeds of strife.

The letter was addressed to the UNSC, the institution responsible for protecting peace and security, to alert it of the possible consequences of Ethiopia’s unilateral acts, according to Mohamed Hegazi, a former deputy to Egypt’s foreign minister.

If the international community does not deal with that matter, Egypt has the right, under Article 51 of the UN Charter, to act in self-defence, said Hegazi.

“I hope that the sending of the letter was accompanied by some tough diplomacy, including taking the issue to the African Union and delivering letters from President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi to different heads of state, including of Nile Basin countries, alerting them to the dangers of the present situation,” said Hegazi. He argued that such steps had become a matter of urgency given that the Ugandan president has called for a summit of Nile Basin states to bring the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement (NBCFA) into force.

The NBCFA, said Hegazi, will contribute to deepening divisions in the region and represents a threat to peace and security. He added that any agreement governing the management of an international river must include downstream as well as upstream states.

Addis Ababa’s unilateral decision to withhold additional amounts of water constitutes a real danger to Egypt, said the letter to the UNSC. Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty also pointed out that Ethiopia’s actions were in violation of the 2021 UNSC presidential statement which urged Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia to resolve their differences through negotiations, and elaborated that 13 years of talks with Addis Ababa had finally been halted due to Ethiopia’s lack of genuine political will to resolve the issue.

The letter described Addis Ababa’s claims that the dam is vital for its development as baseless, stating that “Egypt has always been at the forefront of supporting development in the Nile Basin countries.”

The development process, the letter continued, can only be achieved through cooperative practices that abide by international law, not through harming other states and jeopardising regional integration.

The letter concluded by saying that Egypt is closely monitoring developments and is prepared to take all the measures and steps guaranteed under the UN Charter to defend the interests of its people.

The dam, which can hold up to 74 bcm of water, has been at the centre of a regional dispute ever since Ethiopia started building the project in 2011.

Egypt and Sudan have repeatedly voiced their concerns about its operation and the threat it poses to their access to Nile water in the absence of a legally binding agreement, but the on-off negotiations failed to make a breakthrough.

Egypt, which already suffers from a severe water shortage and depends on the Nile for its water supply, receives about 55.5 bcm of Nile water. Sudan receives 18.5 bcm.

Egypt’s per capita water supply is 550 m3 annually, well below the internationally recognised threshold for water scarcity of 1,000 m3.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly