Farshad Geravand
Abstract
The right to water in investment arbitration has been one of the most contentious issues before investment arbitration tribunals in recent decades. The privatization of public services, including water and sanitation, and assigning them to foreign investors has caused the right to water as a vital benefit ...
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The right to water in investment arbitration has been one of the most contentious issues before investment arbitration tribunals in recent decades. The privatization of public services, including water and sanitation, and assigning them to foreign investors has caused the right to water as a vital benefit being repeatedly raised in investment arbitrations. However, due to tribunals’ narrow interpretation of jurisdiction and applicable law, this fundamental human right has been considered irrelevant and ignored, and this has fueled the legitimacy crises in investment arbitration. This research seeks to indicate the potentiality of more protection of the right to water through balancing the states international obligations in the two areas of investment law and human rights law. Proposed methods for integrating human rights with investment law include the correct interpretation of jurisdictional clauses and the applicable law based on the treaties interpretation principles, systematic integration and the inclusion of new clauses in investment agreements.
Shahab Jafari Nedoushan; Mohammad Hassan Sadeghi Moghadam
Abstract
Fork in the road clauses and waiver clauses in investment treaties are supposed to minimize the number of parallel proceedings in foreign investment disputes. While, Fork in the road clauses preclude investors from further litigation or arbitration once the first dispute settlement mechanism is triggered, ...
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Fork in the road clauses and waiver clauses in investment treaties are supposed to minimize the number of parallel proceedings in foreign investment disputes. While, Fork in the road clauses preclude investors from further litigation or arbitration once the first dispute settlement mechanism is triggered, in waiver clauses, domestic litigation can be followed by treaty arbitration regarding the same dispute. In waiver clause, the foreign investor may recourse to treaty arbitration only if they waive their rights to adjudicate their claim before national and international litigation and arbitration (contract based or treaty based claims). It can be seen that in the application of the waiver clauses in some of the leading cases, grounds for distinguishing between treaty violation from contract violation in the function of waiver clause is not predicted; this approach is desirable. When it comes to the application of the fork in the road clause, investment arbitration precedent shows that identical cause of action is prerequisite for its function. This interpretation severely curtails the function of the fork in the road clause and is criticized in present article
