ISDS Case Map
investor-state disputes | ISDS
How beneficial are Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) for Contracting states remains a hotly debated issue, threatening to eclipse the success due to misgivings generated largely by the Latin American experience.
While media coverage of the China-NZ Free Trade Agreement has focused almost entirely on the possible dollar gains, scant attention has been paid to the equally valid exposure of New Zealand to compensation claims -- should any NZ government be so bold in future as to pass laws or regulations that a foreign investor feels will impact on profitability.
While it is a US company, Exxon Mobil is entitled to invoke protection under the Netherlands-Venezuela Investment Promotion and Protection Convention, which guarantees resolution of Exxon Mobil's dispute with Venezuela in the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
When agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. quietly filed court documents this month to overturn -- and increase -- a multi-million-dollar trade penalty it won against the Mexican government, the move shone a light on Chapter 11, perhaps the most controversial clause in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Canada has just passed legislation implementing the ICSID Convention, a very important tool for the resolution of investor-state disputes. But the government has not yet indicated a timetable for ratification of the treaty. To date, only four provinces and one territory have passed similar implementing legislation.
Venezuela celebrated, as a triumph for countries of the developing South, Tuesday's ruling in its favour by a British court in a legal dispute with US oil giant Exxon Mobil, which overturned an earlier court order to freeze around 12 billion dollars in Venezuelan assets.
Running their business via a letterbox company in the Netherlands, transnational corporations profit from the corporate-friendly Dutch tax regime and bilateral investment treaties the Netherlands has with third countries. Euro Telecom Italia (ETI), a subsidiary of Italian telecoms giant ENTEL, is one such letterbox company. ETI recently lodged a complaint with the World Bank tribunal ICSID against Bolivia for compensation, after the Bolivian government had launched a review the company's much-criticised performance and attempted to negotiate a buy back of what used to be a public telecommunications company.
Foreign companies operating in South Africa that have lost production and ultimately profit as a result of the power supply crisis might be able to sue the government under bilateral investment treaties
The experience with the investor-State dispute settlement of a number of countries, mostly in the Asia-Pacific region, is influencing the development of new international investment agreements in those countries
The Zimbabwe government has admitted that it wronged white commercial farmers when it violently evicted them from their farms at the height of Zanu PF-instigated land invasions in 2000.
