Human Rights and Investment Arbitration – Fields of Interaction

The main scientific purpose of this article is to identify and analyse legal issues that arise between human rights and investment arbitration. At first glance, these two branches of public international law remain completely unrelated and do not have any significant features in common. However, it...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Magdalena Michalska-Guzik
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin 2022-07-01
Series:Przegląd Prawno-Ekonomiczny
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Online Access:https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/ppe/article/view/13411
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Summary:The main scientific purpose of this article is to identify and analyse legal issues that arise between human rights and investment arbitration. At first glance, these two branches of public international law remain completely unrelated and do not have any significant features in common. However, it appears that despite this distinction, there is an interaction between investment arbitration and human rights, which implies a number of significant legal problems. These problems can possibly include the violation of human rights of citizens of the state hosting an investment by a foreign investor. On the other hand, a state can be unable to fulfil its legal obligations regarding human rights due to the necessity to protect foreign investment as agreed in investment treaties or, to the contrary, it may violate its contractual obligations towards an investor and afterwards defend itself throughout arbitration proceedings by stating that this violation has been necessary in order to protect human rights. It turns out that all parties to the dispute, both investors and host States – occasionally turn to human rights in order to reinforce their respective positions. The interaction between human rights and investment arbitration is of a very complex nature and although it is more and more often emphasized that it may occur, the situations in which this occurrence is likely to happen are not entirely clear yet. The author, after presenting some general remarks on the interaction between human rights and investment arbitration, discusses the most common scenarios in which human rights issues may appear in the course of investment arbitration proceedings. Finally, she concludes that there do exist some fields of interaction between human rights and investment arbitration as well as situations in which the conflict between them may appear. Identifying these conflicts would help to understand the complex relationship between the two legal regimes in question. It will also lay the foundation for further research on how to ensure the ultimate scope of human rights protection throughout the different stages of investment arbitration proceedings.
ISSN:1898-2166
2720-6734