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.
zahra hajipour; POURIA askary
Abstract
Investment arbitrations have their own challenges due to their asymmetric nature, which arise from the essential difference between the parties to the claim. The investor on the basis of the investment agreement can bring a claim against the host State, but on the contrary, the counterclaim by States ...
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Investment arbitrations have their own challenges due to their asymmetric nature, which arise from the essential difference between the parties to the claim. The investor on the basis of the investment agreement can bring a claim against the host State, but on the contrary, the counterclaim by States for changing the current process of investment arbitration, in which the ultimate conviction is usually for the State, faces with a number of fundamental challenges. This is due to the non-anticipation of the possibility of counterclaim by States and the difficulty of imposing the obligations of international law on investors. These gaps along with the possibility of violation of human rights by the investor, ultimately, lead to non-compensation of third-parties, who are in many cases the direct victims of human rights abuse in this process. Urbaser v. the Argentina is the first ICSID case which the ICSID arbitration tribunal accepts a counterclaim of a State based on human rights violations and puts it into detail analysis; although finally the State remained unable to prove its claim, and the counterclaim had been rejected in merits.