To contribute to UNCITRAL’s work on how to reform international investment treaties, CCSI, together with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), submitted four documents outlining potential reform options and considerations.

By Rumbidzai Maweni
July 10, 2019

In June 2019, the Business and Human Rights Arbitration Working Group, a private group of international lawyers and academics, published the Draft Arbitration Rules on Business and Human Rights, an initiative which proposes to create an international private judicial dispute resolution avenue for parties involved in business and human rights disputes. This post reviews the proposal in light of recent attempts to address business and human rights in the context of international arbitration with a specific focus on the Bangladesh Accord arbitrations.

Date: June 17-27, 2019
Location: Columbia University

In its current form, the international investment treaty regime may stymie the business and human rights agenda in various ways. The regime may incentivize governments to favour the protection of investors over the protection of human rights. Investment treaty standards enforced through investor-state arbitration risk adversely affecting access to justice for project-affected rights holders. More… read more

In connection with the US Department of State’s Annual Advisory Committee on Private International law meeting in May 2019, CCSI submitted written views (available here) regarding UNCITRAL’s Working Group III on ISDS reform. CCSI’s comments highlighted specific areas of CCSI’s research as it relates to the US Government and its work within the Working Group…. read more

A printable version of this primer is also available here. [Updated as of May 31, 2019] What Are International Investment Agreements (IIAs)? IIAs are bilateral or multilateral treaties that commit state-parties to afford specific standards of conduct to foreign investors from the other state-parties. These treaties grant foreign investors certain benefits, including recourse to Investor-State… read more

In this Working Paper, The Policy Implications of Third-Party Funding in Investor-State Dispute Settlement, CCSI analyzes underexplored yet critical policy issues surrounding the use of third-party funding in ISDS. It considers the costs and benefits of the practice, asks whether it is desirable or undesirable that third-parties be permitted to invest in ISDS claims, and if… read more

By Lise Johnson
May 3, 2019

From April 1-5, 2019, 106 governments met under the auspices of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in New York to discuss how to reform the controversial system of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) presently embedded in thousands of international investment treaties. Intergovernmental organizations, development banks, and dozens of other organizations from around the world participated as official observers. This blog discusses five key takeaways.

International investment treaties entrench and exacerbate intra-national inequality by: Providing stronger substantive legal rights to a certain class of actors that in turn strengthen the legal force of their economic rights and “expectations”, with potentially negative impacts on the competing rights and interests of other stakeholders; and Providing unequal procedural rights to a certain class… read more

Proponents often explain support for international investment agreements (IIAs) for their ability to: (1) promote investment flows; (2) depoliticize disputes between investors and states; (3) promote the rule of law; and (4) provide compensation for certain harms to investors – objectives of varying degrees of importance to multinational enterprises, home states, host states, and other stakeholders…. read more