International Investment Agreements and Human Rights

This paper deals with the intersection of international investment law and human rights. What previously appeared to two specialist communities as a distant fringe phenomenon is rapidly gaining critical traction as a legitimate topic in its own right. Following a review of the history and rationale of investment protection and the main substantive and procedural features of investment treaties, the study examines how the modern investment regime can affect a host state’s capacity to regulate. It finds that to date investment law and arbitration display fragmentary tendencies and have the potential to exert a negative impact on the human rights situation of host states. The paper then analyses different proposals how investment protection could better respect human rights. Its main thesis is that these two fields of international law are not hermetically separate disciplines that cannot interact in a meaningful way. For all their contextual and ideological dissimilarities, investment law and human rights are two fields of international law pursuing the same powerful project of a global rule of law.