The ICOW River Claims Data Set
The river claims data set follows the general guidelines on the ICOW home page.
A river claim is defined as explicit contention between two or more nation-states over the use or abuse of a specific river (or river system). Official government representatives (i.e., individuals who are authorized to make or state foreign policy positions for their governments) must make explicit statements contesting the usage of that river, typically involving concerns of water quality (e.g. pollution), water quantity (e.g. dams or diversion of water for irrigation), or navigation along the river.
Please note that the ICOW Project and its directors do not take or endorse official positions on any river claims. Our goal is to identify cases where nation-states have disagreed over specific issues in the modern era, as well as measuring what made those issues valuable to them and studying how they chose to manage or settle those issues. Inclusion/exclusion of specific cases, and coding of details related to those cases, follows strict guidelines presented in the project's codebooks (which are available below).
Measuring Claim Salience
The salience of river claims is measured by a 0-12 index, which includes up to six points each for the claim's challenger and target states (one point each for six indicators of salience). For more details see the Hensel, Mitchell, Sowers, and Thyne JCR article listed below in the data set references section of this page. Note that each indicator is coded separately for each claimant, as many rivers have different uses in different riparian states:
- Homeland/Dependent Territory: does the river flow through homeland territory, rather than through a colonial or dependent possession?
- Navigation: is the river used for navigation (of people and/or commerce)?
- Population: does the river serve areas that support a permanent population (either villages or at least one city of 100,000+)?
- Fishing/Resource Extraction: does the river feature a fishing or other resource extraction industry?
- Hydroelectric Power: is the river used for hydroelectric power generation?
- Irrigation: is the river used for irrigation?
Project Participants
- Principal Investigators: Paul Hensel and Sara Mitchell
- Research Assistants: Patrick Armshaw, Anna Batta, Jeremy Backstrom, Marit Brochmann, Glynn Ellis, Tim Haglund, Jen Kruse, Chris Macaulay, Joe Magagnoli, Sunhee Park, Tom Sowers, Emily Stull, and Everett Young
Current Status
Version 1.1 of the ICOW River Claims data set, the latest publicly available version, includes claims over a total of 36 distinct rivers or river systems. Some of these rivers are claimed by multiple claimants at various points in time or are settled temporarily only to see renewed claims later (perhaps over different uses of the river), so these claims include 82 dyadic claims that together cover 763 dyad-years. These claims have been managed through 19 militarized interstate disputes and 190 peaceful settlement attempts (including bilateral negotiations, non-binding third party activities like mediation or good offices, and binding third party activities like arbitration and adjudication).
Version 1.3, the first version to cover the entire world, includes 136 dyadic claims that together cover 1199 dyad years. These claims have been managed through 25 militarized interstate disputes and 325 peaceful settlement attempts. This version of the data set will be released publicly once the article introducing and summarizing the data set has been accepted for publication.
| Region | Number of Claims | Claim-Years, Armed Conflicts, and Peaceful Settlement Attempts |
| Western Hemisphere | 28 dyadic claims | 361 claim-years (5 MIDs, 96 peaceful attempts) |
| Europe | 28 dyadic claims | 194 claim-years (1 MIDs, 109 peaceful attempts) |
| Africa | 11 dyadic claims | 57 claim -years (2 MIDs, 9 peaceful attempts) |
| Middle East | 47 dyadic claims | 321 claim -years (11 MIDs, 64 peaceful attempts) |
| Asia and Oceania | 22 dyadic claims | 266 claim -years (6 MIDs, 47 peaceful attempts) |
Data Set References
The first published article to use the ICOW River Claims data set was Hensel, Mitchell, and Sowers' 2006 PG article:
- Paul R. Hensel, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, and Thomas E. Sowers II (2006). "Conflict Management of Riparian Disputes: A Regional Comparison of Dispute Resolution." Political Geography 25, 4 (May 2006): 383-411.
Two more recent articles compare the territorial, river, and maritime claims data sets, although neither had access to the full version of the river claims data for the entire world:
- Paul R. Hensel, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, Thomas E. Sowers II, and Clayton L. Thyne (2008). "Bones of Contention: Comparing Territorial, Maritime, and River Issues." Journal of Conflict Resolution 2008, 1 (February): 117-143.
- Paul R. Hensel and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell (2017). "From Territorial Claims to Identity Claims: The Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project." Conflict Management and Peace Science 34, 2 (March): 126-140.
Several other recent papers by the principal investigators (as well as many others by other scholars) investigate river claims more specifically:
- Paul R. Hensel and Marit Brochmann (2007). "Armed Conflict over International Rivers: The Onset and Militarization of River Claims." Paper presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Chicago.
- Marit Brochmann and Paul R. Hensel (2009). "Peaceful Management of International River Claims." International Negotiation 14, 2: 391-416.
- Paul R. Hensel, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, and Thomas E. Sowers II, "Conflict Management of Riparian Disputes: A Regional Comparison of Dispute Resolution." Political Geography 25, 4 (May 2006): 383-411.
- Marit Brochmann and Paul R. Hensel (2011). "The Effectiveness of Negotiations over International River Claims." International Studies Quarterly 55, 3 (September): 859-882.
- Sara McLaughlin Mitchell and Neda A. Zawahri (2015). "The Effectiveness of Treaty Design in Addressing Water Disputes." Journal of Peace Research 52(2): 187-200.
- Sojeong Lee and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell (2019). "Energy Resources and the Risk of Conflict in Shared River Basins." Journal of Peace Research 56(3): 336-351.
- Andrew P. Owsiak and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell (2019). "Conflict Management in Land, River, and Maritime Claims." Political Science Research and Methods 7(1): 43-61.
- Cody J. Schmidt, Bomi K. Lee, and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell (2021). "Climate Bones of Contention: How Climate Change Influences Territorial, Maritime, and River Interstate Conflicts.", Journal of Peace Research 58(1): 132-150.
- Sara McLaughlin Mitchell (2024). "Cross-Border Troubles? Interstate River Conflicts and Intrastate Violence." Political Geography 111: 103-109.
Download the Codebooks and Data
All ICOW data sets may be downloaded freely, but we request several professional courtesies from users:
- (1) Please do not redistribute ICOW data to other scholars. Instead, every user should be directed to this web site to download the latest officially released version of the data, which may be more up-to-date. (It would also be desirable for current users of ICOW data to check this web site occasionally to see if newer versions of the data have been released.)
- (2) As you are using the data, if you notice any potential errors or missing cases, please report them to the ICOW project, so that we can investigate and correct the error if appropriate.
- (3) Please email us a copy of any of your research. We are always interested in seeing what other scholars are doing with the data.
Coding Manuals
The following links provide access to the coding manuals and other useful information:
- ICOW Data user's manual (in PDF format; a description and variable list for the full ICOW data on territorial, river, and maritime claims, including peaceful settlement attempts; this file is also included in the data download, below)
- River claims coding manual (in PDF format; the coding rules and instructions that were used by ICOW researchers as they collected and coded the river claims data)
- General ICOW coding manual (in PDF format; general coding rules and instructions for ICOW researchers working on the territorial, river, or maritime claims data sets)
- ICOW non-state actor list (in PDF format; a list of actor codes for non-state actors that were involved in ICOW claims, usually as third parties trying to help manage or settle the claims)
Please note that this, like all ICOW data sets, uses the list of country codes in the COW interstate system. Please see that list for help in identifying which countries were involved in the events included in this data set, or for any questions about when each country was considered a sovereign, recognized state.
Data
The river claims data set is included in the main ICOW data download, along with the territorial claims and maritime claims data sets:
- ICOW Data version 1.1 (a .zip archive containing the data in STATA and .CSV format as well as a user's manual in PDF format):
- The latest release version of the ICOW territorial claims, river claims, and maritime claims data sets, including claim dates, participants, salience, militarization, and peaceful settlement attempts (bilateral or third party) for all claims. This release covers territorial claims in the Western Hemisphere and Western Europe (1816-2001); river claims in Western Hemisphere, Western Europe, and the Middle East (1900-2001); and maritime claims in the Western Hemisphere and Europe (1900-2001). Additional research is currently underway to extend the coverage of each of these three issue types to the remaining regions of the world.
- A standalone version of ICOW River Claims data version 1.3 (separate from the other ICOW data sets) will be released here once the article summarizing the data set has been accepted for publication. This is the first complete version of this data set that covers river claims across the entire world.
- List of cases (coming soon)
We have also collected additional data related to international rivers, which scholars might find useful for their own studies of rivers (whether or not they use the ICOW river claims data):
- ICOW International River Basin data version 1.0 (a .zip archive containing the data in STATA and .CSV format as well as a user's manual in PDF format):
- This is the list of international river basins that we use to organize our research strategy and our data sets, largely based on the International Registry of Rivers that is available on the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database web site at Oregon State. It includes the ICOW project's name and numeric code number for each basin, as well as other names or code numbers from other data sources (currently the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database and Basins at Risk projects, but we would appreciate suggestions for other basin lists or code numbers). Users should find this useful for merging basin-level data from different sources, or for comparing basin names from different sources (which are not always as similar as one might hope). Over time, this data set will likely be expanded to add further details about each basin.
Contact Information
The ICOW River Claims data set is collected and maintained by Paul Hensel at the University of North Texas. Please contact him with any questions about the data set:
http://www.paulhensel.org/icowriver.html
Last updated: 10 April 2025
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