|
|
|
|
Spotlight: Rethinking international investment treaties
|
|
|
Plans to create a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between Europe and the US have sparked much debate about investment treaties – but hundreds of treaties concluded with low and middle-income countries have attracted little public attention.
Promoting debate on ways to rethink investment treaties has been one of the Legal Tools Team’s strategic areas of focus over the past year. We have been generating evidence, sharing lessons and feeding into policy.
In June 2015 we published ‘Land rights and investment treaties: Exploring the interface’, a report shedding light on how international investment treaties can affect local land rights – for example, in the context of land reform, action to tackle ‘land grabbing’ or the functioning of land governance systems.
We also published academic research on whether investment treaties unduly constrain policy space, and on how the relationship between human rights and investment law can affect pressures on the world’s natural resources.
Around the world, citizens’ groups are stepping up advocacy on international investment law – by scrutinising treaty negotiations, intervening in investor-state arbitrations, catalysing grassroots mobilisation or promoting public debate. Our team has facilitated international lesson sharing.
Civil society activists shared their experience at international webinars, and published lesson-learning reports on advocacy on Malaysia’s participation in Transpacific Partnership negotiations, and on submissions to an investor-state arbitration related to a mining project in El Salvador.
A report on ‘Democratising international investment law’ summarises key findings.
We have fed insights into policy processes at national and international levels – attending international dialogues and providing capacity support for government, parliamentarians and civil society.
|
|
|
There are growing calls to reform international investment law, but how can we ensure that the people affected by these decisions are part of the debate? Drawing from examples in Malaysia and El Salvador, our principal researcher Lorenzo Cotula advocates for more transparency and public oversight in treaty negotiations.
|
|
|
Commercial land concessions can be protected under international investment law, with important implications for indigenous peoples, small-scale rural producers, or landless and other poor and marginalised groups. In this blog, Lorenzo Cotula argues that securing land rights requires tackling these global dimensions. Read the associated briefing paper.
|
|
|
Upcoming webinar: Promoting accountability in agricultural investment chains
Large-scale agricultural projects, which can affect the land rights and livelihoods of communities, often involve a 'web' of global actors (e.g. banks, companies importing farm produces) that are all part of an 'investment chain'. In a webinar on 11 September (12-1.30pm GMT+1) we will discuss how community groups can take action to make this web of actors more accountable and thus better defend the people whose lives have been negatively impacted by agricultural investments.
Our guest speaker David Pred, managing director at Inclusive Development International (IDI), will share his hands-on experience in promoting accountability in relation to land concessions in Cambodia.
The webinar will also feature the launch of a new advocate’s guide to securing accountability for agricultural investments.
|
|
|
If you missed it, watch our five-minute animated film designed to help local communities understand investment chains and protect their rights in the face of large-scale land acquisitions.
|
|
|
Publications and briefings
|
|
|
Land rights and investment treaties: exploring the interface
This report sheds light on how investment treaties can affect land rights. It finds that investment treaties can have far-reaching implications for land reform, for public action to address “land grabbing” and more generally for land governance frameworks. The report also charts directions for socio-legal research to explore how investment treaties are affecting land rights on the ground.
|
|
|
Following the money: an advocate’s guide to securing accountability for agricultural investments
This guide is for organisations and individuals working to support communities whose land rights, lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by agricultural investments. Drawing on real-life examples and lessons learned from activists and practitioners throughout the world, it provides guidance on strategies for holding the actors involved in agricultural investments accountable for human rights violations and all sorts of malpractices.
|
|
|
|
Advocacy on investment treaty negotiations: lessons from Malaysian civil society
Given their far-reaching implications, advocating on investment treaties negotiations requires developing effective alliances and well thought-out strategies. In Malaysia in 2013, 52 non-governmental organisations, trade associations and civil society groups established a coalition to raise public awareness and develop advocacy about the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership with the US and other countries. In this publication,
Fauwaz Abdul Aziz draws lessons from that experience.
|
|
|
|
Bringing community perspectives to investor-state arbitration: the Pac Rim case
Civil society organisations can play an important role in carrying and strengthening community voices in arbitration processes. In this publication, Thierry Berger, Saúl Baños and Marcos A. Orellana distil lessons from the experience of La Mesa, a coalition of community organisations, research institutes and environmental, human rights and faith-based non-profit organisations advocating on metals mining in El Salvador.
|
|
|
|
Land rights, international law and a shrinking planet
As the media spotlight on ‘land grabbing’ wanes, Lorenzo Cotula interrogates the deeper-level transformations in control over natural resources at local to global levels, and explores how developments in international law are shaping these transformations while also creating new spaces for contestation and accountability.
|
|
|
|
A time for change? Comments on Chad’s draft Land Code
Lorenzo Cotula and Thierry Berger provide comments and recommendations on Chad’s draft Land Code (January 2014 version), covering the overall structure of land ownership, management and administration systems, the protection of customary rights, safeguards in compulsory land acquisition, the rights of pastoralists, gender, land-based investments and dispute resolution. Also available in French.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
