Kashmir Is a Bilateral Dispute in Name Only: The Myth of Bilateralism

  By: Ziaullah Zahir

“Kashmir sits in three places at once inside India’s borders, on Pakistan’s agenda, and still open on the United Nations’ books.”

For decades, India has said Kashmir is a bilateral matter, only for India and Pakistan to discuss, no outsiders needed.But look at the facts. A United Nations mission has stayed in the region for more than seventy years, with observers still there today. If Kashmir were truly just a matter between two countries, why would the UN still be watching?

In 1972, India and Pakistan signed the Simla Agreement, right after the 1971 war that ended with the creation of Bangladesh. Both countries had just been through a major conflict and wanted to avoid another one.The agreement said both sides should settle differences by peaceful means, through bilateral talks. This was not the first such attempt. Years earlier, the Tashkent Agreement of 1966 had made a similar call. But Simla became the main document India has pointed to ever since, whenever outside involvement in Kashmir comes up.At the time, this was meaningful. It ended a war and opened a channel for dialogue. Nobody can take that away from it.

But here is the key point. An agreement between two governments cannot cancel a resolution passed by the United Nations Security Council. Simla was signed by India and Pakistan, never by the UN. It does not have the power to erase what came before it, no matter how often it gets quoted as if it does.

Long before Simla, the UN Security Council had already stepped into the Kashmir issue. In 1948, it passed Resolution 47, calling for a ceasefire and for the people of Kashmir to eventually have a say in their own future through a vote. More resolutions followed, built around this same idea.None of these resolutions were ever formally withdrawn or cancelled by a later vote. They simply sit there, unresolved, in the UN’s own records, decades later.

To support this early effort, the UN also created a small observer mission  UNMOGIP, set up in 1949, even before the first Kashmir war fully ended. Remarkably, it still exists today. India has argued for years that this mission outlived its purpose after Simla. Pakistan disagrees, and continues to let UN observers operate on its side of the Line of Control. Whatever each side says, the mission has not been shut down. It quietly continues, which suggests the UN itself never closed the file, even after 1972.

Here is something worth noting. India talks about bilateral talks often. But real, steady talks between India and Pakistan have been rare. Peace efforts have started and stopped many times. Ceasefires have broken down more than once.To be fair, Pakistan’s record on steady engagement has also been inconsistent. Trust between the two countries has been hard to build from both sides. This is not a one-sided problem.Still, the word “bilateral” tends to come up most often when the UN or other countries raise concerns about Kashmir. It is used to close the conversation, more than to open real talks.

In fact, this pattern is hard to miss once you notice it. Whenever the UN human rights office raises a concern, or a foreign parliament mentions Kashmir, India’s first response is almost always the same line: this is a bilateral issue, please stay out of it. The word is rarely used to invite Pakistan to the table. It is used to tell everyone else to leave the room. Over time, “bilateral” has become less of a policy and more of a shield, a quick way to block outside scrutiny without having to answer the actual concern being raised.

It helps to ask a simple question. Who benefits from calling this issue “bilateral”? And who benefits from calling it “international”?India controls most of the region today, so the bilateral framing helps keep things as they are. Pakistan wants the situation to change, so it prefers international attention. Both approaches serve each country’s own interests. Neither side is purely acting out of principle.

India’s argument is not without merit. In the 1950s, UN-led talks on Kashmir went on for years without result. India argues that international mediation can drag on, get exploited by one side, or fail to solve anything on the ground. This is a real concern, not just a talking point.It is also worth noting that not everyone accepts India’s bilateral framing quietly. In 2019, when the UN Security Council discussed Kashmir, China’s ambassador said the issue should be resolved through the UN Charter, Security Council resolutions, and bilateral agreements together, not bilateral agreements alone. And in 2025, Pakistan went a step further. It suspended the Simla Agreement itself, arguing that India’s own actions in Kashmir had broken the terms of the deal, and openly sought UN and international involvement once again.

The truth is likely in between. Kashmir is not purely bilateral. The UN’s own resolutions and its observer mission are still active, even if quiet. But it is also true that outside involvement has not always led to results either.What seems clear is this: calling Kashmir “bilateral” on paper has not matched what happens in practice. Real, sustained talks between the two countries have been missing for a long time. At the same time, the world’s institutions have not fully stepped back, even if they rarely act with force.

Maybe the honest answer is that Kashmir sits between two labels. It is neither fully bilateral nor fully international in practice. Until one side shows real commitment to solving it directly, or the UN takes clearer action on its own resolutions, this gap will likely stay open, and so will the dispute.