ISDS Case Map
UNCITRAL
United Nations Commission on International Trade Law
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.
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.
Reform of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) is being deliberated at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group III, which will be meeting in New York between the 1st and 5th of April 2019.
Existing arrangements for third parties to participate in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) are not designed to protect people whose rights and interests are directly at stake.
The EU and its Member States submitted two papers to the UN Working Group under the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL).
UNCITRAL Working Group III met in Vienna from October 29 to November 2, 2018 and decided that multilateral reform is desirable to address various concerns regarding ISDS.
New briefing explores potential sources of inconsistency in ISDS, from divergent interpretations of provisions to decisions inconsistent with societal objectives, and the way forward.
The UNCITRAL process runs a real risk of producing middle-ground solutions that will fail to address the fundamental flaws of the ISDS system and will only further institutionalise and re-legitimise the system.
More than 300 civil society groups and trade unions urged governments participating in United Nations meetings in Vienna to completely overhaul the controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system.
