Advocates of ISDS (industrialised countries and lawyers from the ‘arbitration industry’) dominate the running of the Working Group and its advisory bodies. Civil society is underrepresented.
The Global Campaign to Reclaim Peoples´ Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power and End Impunity regrets the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada regarding the case of Chevron in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
The principle that adjudicators must be independent and impartial is at the core of any adjudicatory mechanism. It plays an important role in Investor-State arbitration, where arbitrators typically sit for a short amount of time and are not career judges.
We wish to express our overarching concerns that international investment agreements and their ISDS mechanism have often proved to be incompatible with international human rights law and the rule of law.
Investor-State dispute settlement continues to be controversial, spurring debate in the investment and development community and the public at large. States are responding to challenges and concerns surrounding ISDS through different avenues.
The Australian mining company Kingsgate Consolidated, armed with a US$55-million insurance payout for the closure of its gold mine in Thailand, says it now has the financial means to pursue its arbitration case against the Thai government.
The next meeting of a United Nations working group debating options for reforming investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) will take place in New York from April 1 to 5.