RIVERS AS LEGAL STRUCTURES - THE EXAMPLES OF THE JORDAN AND THE NILE

As long as there have been communities sharing water, there have been disputes over how the water has been shared. The Middle East, an enorm ous dry region stretching from Marrakech to Samarkand, has had some of the longest experiences of such controversies. Today many of the rive r basins within the region illustrate the effectiveness and limitation s of both customary international law and treaty law in resolving such problems at the interstate level. This article examines the national communities sharing two highly contested river basins-the Jordan and t he Nile-in the region as examplars of those successes and failures.(1)