The Helsinki Rules on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers is an international guideline regulating how rivers and their connected groundwaters that cross national boundaries may be used, adopted by the International Law Association (ILA) in Helsinki, Finland in August 1966. In spite of its adoption by the ILA, there is no mechanism in place that enforces the rules.[1] Notwithstanding the guideline's lack of formal status, its work on rules governing international rivers was pioneering.[2] It led to the creation of the United Nations' Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. In 2004, it was superseded by the Berlin Rules on Water Resources.
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Applicable to all drainage basins that cross national boundaries, except where other agreement between bordering nations exists, the Helsinki Rules assert the rights of all bordering nations to an equitable share in the water resources, with reasonable consideration of such factors as past customary usages of the resource and balancing variant needs and demands of the bordering nations. It also mandates protection of the resource by bordering nations with respect to water pollution and sets forth recommendations for resolving disputes over usage of such watercourses.
Although "an important set of draft rules," according to Stephen McCaffrey of the McGeorge School of Law, the Helsinki Rules do not address independent aquifers, but only those connected to a river.[3] Accordingly, the United Nations decided in 1970 to create a more inclusive set of guidelines, which after more than twenty years of investigation by the International Law Commission resulted in the adopting of the Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses in 1997.[4] The ILA itself addressed this limitation in adopting the Rules on International Groundwaters, also known as the Seoul Rules, in Seoul, Korea in 1986 and the Berlin Rules on Water Resources in 2004, which superseded this guideline.[3][4]