ABSTRACT
Activities related to the transboundary waters of the Aral Sea Basin, shared by Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,Tajikistan,Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, are subject to a diverse patchwork of bilateral and multilateral treaties, inherited from the Soviet past and adopted in recent decades.These legal arrangements provide incomplete solutions to a myriad of water-related problems in the region. This chapter explores whether the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention (UNWC), the only global water treaty, has a role to play in assisting countries in building and maintaining effective and peaceful management systems for their shared waters. It is based on findings from a regional assessment of the role and relevance of the UNWC for the Aral Sea Basin countries undertaken within a research programme between the IHP-HELP Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science (under the auspices of UNESCO), University of Dundee andWWF.
