Water has long been a tool of warfare, but in recent years, the world has entered a dark new era of hydroterrorism. Around the globe, from Yemen to Ukraine, this critical resource is increasingly being used as a tool of control. According to the Pacific Institute, global water-related violence surged by more than 50 percent in 2023 alone. Yet international institutions still treat water as a development or an environmental issue—not as the national security flashpoint it has become.
Fair-weather frameworks, such as the United Nations’ Water Convention and the Integrated Water Resources Management approach, won’t survive the coming storms, and as climate shocks intensify, ignoring this threat is nothing short of negligent. Climate-driven water stress breeds desperation, especially in places where corrupt or absent governments create a vacuum. And extremist groups step into this void, offering a distorted sense of order.
This problem is particularly pronounced in the Sahel, where violent extremist groups with ties to the Islamic State and al Qaeda exploit water scarcity for power. In areas abandoned by underfunded governments, these groups offer water and resources to desperate communities, recruiting through a disturbing fusion of faith and survival.
In my homeland of Gambia, which is located in the Sahel, rising salinity from climate change is creeping inland. As a result, nearly a third of the country’s rice fields could become unusable within a decade. In neighboring Senegal, water demand is projected to surge by up to 60 percent by 2035, while rainfall has generally decreased.
Tensions are already rising fast. More than a quarter of Gambia’s 2.6 million people lack access to safe drinking water. Seasonal water shortages drive internal migration and strain cities such as Banjul. Over the past five years, there have been 450 clashes among farmers and herders in the central Sahel over dwindling water sources and grazing land. Gambia’s strong tradition of religious tolerance has helped it resist the allure of extremism thus far. But rising youth unemployment and climate stress heighten the risk of radicalization.
Across the Sahel, this is becoming the norm. Recent studies have found that water conflicts in Africa have increased over the past 20 years and that water scarcity is linked to violent conflict in the Sahel. Meanwhile, extremists are expanding into Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, where state authority is collapsing. Gambia is located just west of these countries, and without urgent regional cooperation, it could be next to fall victim to widespread insurgencies.
In the past, regional governments have tried to work together to stem this problem. During the 1970s and 1980s, extreme drought conditions helped drive the formation of the Senegambia Confederation—a bold but short-lived political union to promote integration between Gambia and Senegal, including the joint management of river basins and agriculture. The confederation ultimately collapsed in 1989 due to political mistrust and the countries’ failure to integrate their militaries and economies. Yet it recognized what policymakers must remember today: Water knows no borders.
And herein lies the problem. Despite nearly two-thirds of global freshwater flowing across national borders, the world still lacks a modern global framework to govern it. Most water-sharing agreements today are bilateral, outdated, and easy to abandon when relations sour. Take the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement between Egypt and Sudan, which has fueled decades of regional friction because it excluded upstream states such as Ethiopia.
This is why the world needs new international transboundary water agreements with teeth. Organizations such as the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, and the United Nations must take the lead and craft enforceable treaties that include clauses for de-escalation, binding arbitration, and real-time data sharing to ensure base-level cooperation even during conflict. Beyond this, treaties should also mandate the use of technologies such as satellite monitoring and artificial intelligence-powered forecasting to predict and manage water shortages through early warning systems, which would allow for preemptive action before desperation descends into violence.
But no international solution like this will succeed until policymakers tackle the root causes of hydroterrorism: climate-driven water shortages, state failure, and the erosion of public trust. To counter this, civil society organizations and the international community must join forces to deliver public services and build community resilience from within. That means looking beyond traditional political and diplomatic strategies to drive lasting change from the ground up.
Across West Africa, civil society groups are already laying the groundwork to mobilize climate action. Organizations such as Faith for Our Planet (FFOP) ensure that religion can be a tool for climate action. Founded by Mohammed bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa, the head of the Muslim World League, FFOP trains religious leaders to connect climate science with spiritual teachings.
For example, FFOP’s Youth Interfaith Leaders Fellowship, which I attended in 2023, empowers the next generation to confront issues such as water scarcity in ways that take cultural contexts into account. And in 2024, the Muslim World League helped put these teachings into practice. Citing the Islamic belief that the welfare of all people should be sought without discrimination, it launched an ambitious project to ensure access to clean water in Malawi.
Other grassroots initiatives have made meaningful inroads on conflict resolution. In Nigeria, for instance, organizations such as Search for Common Ground train local mediators to resolve water-related disputes in Boko Haram-affected areas. In Mali, community dialogues have successfully defused tensions over irrigation access in drought-stricken areas.
The impact of these initiatives often surpasses that of international missions, largely because they are deeply embedded in local communities. And history shows that sustained grassroots pressure works. For example, it is thanks to the advocacy of civil society groups such as Stop Ecocide International that the International Criminal Court is on the verge of recognizing ecocide as a fifth core crime—a breakthrough that builds on recent gains in climate justice, as citizens across Europe have started to hold their governments legally accountable for environmental failures.
This brings me to my final point. The international community must take the decisive step of clearly recognizing water weaponization as a crime under international law. The manipulation of this resource to harm civilians or coerce nations must carry real consequences, including sanctions, prosecutions, and reparations.
Around the world, 1.8 billion people live in areas of absolute water scarcity, meaning that they have access to less than 500 cubic meters of water per year. Many of these individuals are one crisis away from falling into the grip of extremism. Weathering this reality will likely take decades and the combined efforts of countless organizations and governments.
But if the international community develops a modern framework to govern transboundary water—with enforceable legal standards, climate-resilient infrastructure, and community inclusion at its core—then it can shift the tide. Only then can people reclaim water as a critical life source, not a weapon of war.