Last Updated June 24, 2026
Why Investment Treaties Matter
Investment treaties matter because they convert cross-border investment protection into international legal obligation. A foreign investor may not need to rely only on diplomatic protection, domestic courts, or political negotiation. In many treaty systems, the investor can bring a direct claim against the host state before an international arbitral tribunal. That institutional design is one of the most consequential innovations in modern international economic law.
The field affects far more than commercial disputes. Investment treaty claims have arisen from privatization, infrastructure concessions, mining, oil and gas, renewable energy incentives, banking measures, tax disputes, public health regulation, water services, environmental permitting, nuclear phase-outs, land-use restrictions, financial crises, and emergency measures. A treaty drafted to protect investment can therefore become a forum for contesting public law.
The core tension is simple but deep. Investors want protection against arbitrary, discriminatory, confiscatory, or unstable state action. States want capital, technology, jobs, infrastructure, and development, but they also need room to regulate in the public interest. Investment law promises depoliticized dispute settlement, yet disputes often involve politically sensitive choices about welfare, environment, taxation, development strategy, and democratic accountability.
What Investment Treaties Do
Investment treaties are agreements between states that provide protections to investors from one state when they invest in the territory of another. These agreements may appear as bilateral investment treaties, investment chapters in free trade agreements, regional investment agreements, sector-specific treaties, or older instruments such as the Energy Charter Treaty. Their legal design varies, but most share a common set of functions.
They define covered investment
Treaties identify what assets count as protected investments: shares, concessions, contracts, licenses, tangible property, intellectual property, debt instruments, resource rights, or enterprise interests.
They define protected investors
Treaties specify who qualifies as an investor of a contracting party, often by nationality, incorporation, seat, control, or substantial business activity.
They create standards of treatment
Common standards include fair and equitable treatment, full protection and security, protection against uncompensated expropriation, national treatment, most-favored-nation treatment, and free transfer of funds.
They create dispute mechanisms
Many treaties allow investors to sue host states directly through arbitration under ICSID, UNCITRAL, or other institutional or ad hoc procedures.
Investment treaties are not identical. Older treaties often contain broad protections with limited public-interest exceptions. Newer treaties may include more precise definitions, general exceptions, carve-outs, transparency rules, denial-of-benefits clauses, investor obligations, exhaustion or fork-in-the-road provisions, interpretive statements, appellate mechanisms, or permanent-court proposals.
The treaty text matters. Small differences in wording can change jurisdiction, liability, defenses, damages, and policy space. A treaty that protects “investments” broadly, includes expansive fair and equitable treatment, and lacks explicit regulatory exceptions may create a different risk profile from a modern agreement that narrows covered investments, clarifies indirect expropriation, preserves non-discriminatory public-welfare regulation, and limits investor access to arbitration.
Historical Development of Investment Protection
Investment protection grew out of older doctrines of diplomatic protection, state responsibility, concession agreements, colonial and postcolonial resource disputes, and the contested treatment of foreign property. Before modern investor-state arbitration, an injured foreign investor generally needed its home state to espouse the claim. That structure made investment disputes politically mediated and often unequal.
After decolonization, many newly independent states sought greater control over natural resources, nationalization, and development planning. Capital-exporting states and investors sought legal guarantees against uncompensated expropriation and discriminatory treatment. Debates over the New International Economic Order, permanent sovereignty over natural resources, and standards of compensation shaped the field. Investment treaties emerged as one response to uncertainty over foreign-property protection.
The ICSID Convention, which entered into force in 1966, provided an institutional mechanism for resolving investment disputes between states and nationals of other states. It did not itself create substantive investment protections, but it created a forum for arbitration where consent existed. Bilateral investment treaties then supplied the substantive standards and often consent to arbitration.
By the 1990s and 2000s, investor-state arbitration expanded dramatically. Treaty networks grew, cases multiplied, awards became more visible, and public controversy intensified. Critics argued that investment arbitration privileged private property claims over public regulation, lacked consistency, imposed heavy costs, and gave private arbitrators authority over matters of public law. Defenders argued that treaties protect against abuse, depoliticize disputes, promote rule of law, and support cross-border investment.
The Architecture of Investment Treaties
An investment treaty should be read as an architecture, not as a loose collection of investor rights. Its operative meaning depends on definitions, admission clauses, substantive protections, exceptions, dispute-settlement provisions, procedural prerequisites, interpretive notes, institutional rules, and relationship clauses with domestic law or other international obligations.
| Component | Legal question | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Definitions | Who is an investor and what is an investment? | Controls jurisdiction and treaty coverage. |
| Admission / establishment | Does protection begin before or only after admission under host-state law? | Affects pre-establishment rights and market-access claims. |
| Treatment standards | What conduct breaches the treaty? | Defines liability through FET, expropriation, non-discrimination, FPS, and related clauses. |
| Exceptions and carve-outs | What regulatory measures are protected? | Preserves policy space for health, environment, taxation, security, prudential regulation, and public welfare. |
| Dispute settlement | Where and how may claims be brought? | Determines forum, procedure, transparency, enforcement, and costs. |
| Remedies | What compensation or relief is available? | Shapes settlement incentives, fiscal exposure, and regulatory risk. |
Good treaty analysis begins with the instrument as a whole. An expropriation clause cannot be interpreted without its annexes or police-powers language. A fair and equitable treatment clause cannot be evaluated without knowing whether the treaty ties it to the minimum standard of treatment under customary international law. An MFN clause cannot be assumed to import procedural rights unless the treaty and relevant case law support that interpretation.
Investor-State Dispute Settlement
Investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, allows a qualifying investor to bring a claim directly against a host state. Unlike traditional state-to-state dispute settlement, ISDS gives private parties procedural standing under international law. The tribunal usually decides whether the state breached treaty obligations and, if so, what compensation or relief is owed.
ISDS claims may be administered by institutions such as the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, conducted under the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules, or governed by other arbitral rules identified in the treaty. Some disputes involve contract-based arbitration, but treaty arbitration is distinct because the source of the claim is an international agreement between states.
The central justification for ISDS is that foreign investors may face political risk, weak domestic courts, discrimination, expropriation, or arbitrary treatment in host states. The central critique is that ISDS permits private actors to challenge public regulation outside ordinary domestic constitutional and administrative systems, often seeking large monetary awards from public budgets.
Jurisdiction, Consent, Investor, and Investment
Jurisdiction is the threshold battlefield in investment arbitration. A tribunal must have authority over the parties, the dispute, the investment, and the treaty claim. Consent is central. A state’s consent may be expressed in a treaty, domestic investment law, contract, or other instrument. The investor’s consent is usually expressed by filing the arbitration request.
Investment treaties typically require that the claimant qualify as an investor of one contracting party and that the investment be located in the territory of the other contracting party. Corporate nationality, ownership chains, mailbox companies, denial-of-benefits clauses, substantial business activity requirements, and restructuring before a dispute can all become contested.
The meaning of “investment” is also contested. Some treaties define investment broadly as every kind of asset. Others require characteristics such as commitment of capital, duration, risk, contribution to development, or compliance with host-state law. Under ICSID arbitration, tribunals also consider the jurisdictional limits of the ICSID Convention.
Consent
Has the state consented to this claim, this claimant, this treaty, this forum, and this procedural route?
Investor
Does the claimant satisfy treaty nationality, ownership, control, and denial-of-benefits requirements?
Investment
Is the asset covered by treaty text and, if relevant, by ICSID jurisdictional requirements?
Dispute
Does the dispute arise directly out of the investment and fall within the treaty’s temporal and subject-matter scope?
Substantive Standards of Protection
The substantive standards in investment treaties define what states owe to protected investors. These standards are often drafted broadly, and their interpretation has shaped the field. The most important standards include protection against expropriation without compensation, fair and equitable treatment, full protection and security, national treatment, most-favored-nation treatment, free transfer of funds, and sometimes umbrella clauses that elevate certain contractual commitments.
| Standard | Typical function | Recurring controversy |
|---|---|---|
| Expropriation | Protects against uncompensated taking of property or equivalent deprivation. | Distinguishing compensable indirect expropriation from non-compensable public regulation. |
| Fair and equitable treatment | Protects against arbitrariness, denial of justice, lack of due process, or frustrated legitimate expectations depending on treaty text. | Whether FET becomes an open-ended stability guarantee. |
| Full protection and security | Requires reasonable protection of investment security, traditionally physical security. | Whether it extends to legal or regulatory security. |
| National treatment | Requires treatment no less favorable than comparable domestic investors. | Identifying proper comparators and justifications for differential treatment. |
| MFN treatment | Requires treatment no less favorable than investors from third states. | Whether MFN imports substantive or procedural protections from other treaties. |
| Umbrella clause | May require compliance with obligations entered into with investors. | Whether contract breaches become treaty breaches. |
The key is not to treat these standards as slogans. Each standard must be interpreted through the treaty’s text, context, object and purpose, applicable interpretive rules, arbitral practice, and any subsequent state agreement or treaty amendment.
Expropriation, Indirect Expropriation, and Compensation
Expropriation is the classic investment-law claim. Direct expropriation occurs when a state formally takes title or seizes property. Indirect expropriation is more difficult: it involves measures that substantially deprive an investor of the use, value, or control of an investment without formal transfer of title.
Most treaties do not prohibit expropriation absolutely. They generally require that expropriation serve a public purpose, be non-discriminatory, follow due process, and be accompanied by compensation. The real disputes often concern whether a measure counts as expropriation and how compensation should be calculated.
Indirect expropriation is where regulatory sovereignty becomes most sensitive. Environmental permits, zoning rules, mining bans, public health measures, energy-transition policies, price controls, emergency measures, or revocation of licenses may reduce investment value. But not every economic loss is a taking. Modern treaties increasingly clarify that non-discriminatory measures designed and applied to protect legitimate public welfare objectives do not ordinarily constitute indirect expropriation.
Fair and Equitable Treatment
Fair and equitable treatment, often abbreviated as FET, is one of the most frequently invoked and contested investment treaty standards. Depending on the treaty, it may be tied to the customary international law minimum standard of treatment, defined through a closed list of conduct, or left as a broad autonomous standard. The difference matters enormously.
FET claims often involve allegations of arbitrariness, denial of justice, lack of transparency, procedural unfairness, discrimination, coercion, abuse of power, bad faith, instability, or frustration of legitimate expectations. Tribunals have sometimes treated legitimate expectations as central, especially where the state made specific representations to an investor. Critics argue that broad legitimate-expectations doctrine risks freezing regulation and turning investment treaties into regulatory-stability guarantees.
Modern treaty drafting often narrows FET. Some agreements define it through specific categories such as denial of justice, fundamental breach of due process, manifest arbitrariness, targeted discrimination on wrongful grounds, and abusive treatment. This approach seeks to reduce uncertainty while preserving protection against serious misconduct.
National Treatment, MFN, and Non-Discrimination
National treatment requires a host state to treat covered foreign investors no less favorably than comparable domestic investors in like circumstances. MFN treatment requires no less favorable treatment than that provided to investors from third states. These clauses aim to reduce discrimination and prevent states from favoring domestic or selected foreign investors unfairly.
Non-discrimination analysis depends on comparators. Are the investors in like circumstances? Are they in the same sector? Are they subject to the same regulatory risks? Does a legitimate public purpose justify different treatment? Is the measure facially discriminatory, discriminatory in effect, or based on legitimate regulatory distinctions?
MFN clauses are especially controversial when investors use them to import more favorable protections from other treaties. Some tribunals have permitted importation of substantive standards. Procedural importation is more contested. Modern treaties may expressly limit MFN clauses to prevent them from importing dispute-settlement provisions or standards from unrelated agreements.
Full Protection, Umbrella Clauses, Transfers, and Performance Requirements
Investment treaties often include additional protections beyond expropriation, FET, and non-discrimination. Full protection and security traditionally concerns physical protection of investors and investments from violence or interference. Some tribunals have read it more broadly, but many modern analyses remain cautious about extending it to general legal stability.
Umbrella clauses may require states to observe obligations entered into with respect to investments. Their interpretation is difficult because they can blur the line between contract and treaty. Not every contract breach should automatically become an international law breach unless the treaty text supports that result.
Free-transfer clauses protect the movement of capital, profits, dividends, loan repayments, proceeds from sale, and compensation. These clauses matter during financial crises, currency restrictions, sanctions, capital controls, and emergency economic measures. Some treaties include balance-of-payments exceptions, prudential carve-outs, or temporary restrictions.
Performance-requirement provisions may restrict host states from requiring local content, export targets, domestic procurement, technology transfer, or local hiring as conditions for investment. These rules can support investor freedom but may also constrain industrial policy and development strategy. Their practical significance depends on the treaty, sector, and development model at issue.
Arbitral Procedure, Institutions, and Transparency
Investment arbitration procedure is shaped by treaty text, arbitral rules, institutional rules, and tribunal orders. ICSID proceedings operate under the ICSID Convention and rules where jurisdiction exists. UNCITRAL arbitration is often ad hoc but may involve administrative support from institutions. Other rules may apply depending on the treaty.
Transparency has become one of the major reform issues. Older investor-state arbitration was often confidential, even when disputes involved public regulation. The UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration seek to make documents, hearings, and participation more accessible in qualifying cases. The Mauritius Convention on Transparency extends that logic for states that accept it.
Procedural legitimacy also involves arbitrator independence, conflicts of interest, repeat appointments, third-party funding, security for costs, consolidation, amicus submissions, provisional measures, bifurcation, document production, confidentiality, and enforcement. Because investment disputes often affect public interests, procedure is not merely technical. It shapes who can see, participate in, and contest the legal process.
Damages, Remedies, and Valuation
Damages are one of the most consequential parts of investment arbitration. Awards can place significant pressure on public budgets, especially for developing states or states facing fiscal crisis. Compensation may be based on fair market value, lost profits, sunk costs, discounted cash flow, comparable transactions, book value, or other valuation methods depending on the claim and evidence.
Valuation is not neutral. Assumptions about future profits, discount rates, project risk, regulatory risk, commodity prices, permits, political instability, and market conditions can dramatically change the award. Claims involving unbuilt projects, speculative profits, natural resources, or long-term concessions are especially difficult.
Interest and costs can also be substantial. Tribunals may award pre-award interest, post-award interest, legal costs, arbitration costs, and expert costs. Third-party funding can influence claim strategy and settlement dynamics. States must therefore evaluate exposure early, not only liability.
Regulatory Sovereignty and the Right to Regulate
Regulatory sovereignty is the state’s capacity to govern in the public interest: to protect health, environment, labor rights, financial stability, consumers, Indigenous lands, cultural heritage, public services, taxation, climate goals, and social welfare. Investment treaties can constrain this capacity when broad investor protections are interpreted to require compensation for regulatory change.
The right to regulate is now a central theme in treaty reform. Modern agreements may include public-welfare exceptions, police-powers language, general exceptions modeled on trade law, interpretive annexes, security exceptions, taxation carve-outs, prudential measures, environmental clauses, labor provisions, corporate social responsibility references, or sustainable-development language.
The hard question is not whether states should be allowed to regulate. They must regulate. The hard question is when regulation becomes abusive, discriminatory, confiscatory, or procedurally unfair. A serious investment-law analysis must hold both sides together: investor protection against state misconduct and public authority to govern changing social, ecological, and economic conditions.
Regulation protected
Non-discriminatory, good-faith, proportionate public-welfare measures are increasingly protected in modern treaty drafting.
Regulation vulnerable
Measures are more legally vulnerable when targeted, arbitrary, retroactive, procedurally unfair, confiscatory, or contrary to specific commitments.
Regulatory chill
States may delay, weaken, or abandon public-interest regulation due to fear of claims, costs, or damages exposure.
Regulatory design
Careful process, evidence, consultation, non-discrimination, transition periods, and reasoned justification can reduce treaty risk.
Climate, Environment, and Energy Transition
Climate policy has brought investment law into sharper controversy. States must decarbonize energy systems, phase down fossil fuels, regulate mining, expand renewable energy, protect ecosystems, and manage transition costs. Investors may claim that changes to permits, incentives, tariffs, concessions, taxes, or phase-out measures breach investment protections.
The Energy Charter Treaty has become emblematic of this tension because it protects energy investments and has generated many investor-state claims. Several states and the European Union have moved toward withdrawal or reform amid concerns that the treaty could hinder climate policy. Modernization efforts and withdrawal notices show that states are reassessing the relationship between energy investment protection and decarbonization.
Environmental regulation also raises investment disputes outside the energy sector: mining bans, water protection, hazardous waste restrictions, pollution controls, protected areas, environmental impact assessments, and Indigenous consultation requirements. The legal challenge is to distinguish legitimate public regulation from discriminatory or arbitrary treatment while preserving the state’s ability to respond to ecological risk.
Climate-law connection
Investment law is now part of the legal politics of decarbonization. It can protect renewable-energy investors, but it can also protect fossil-fuel incumbents against transition measures unless treaties are drafted, interpreted, or terminated with climate policy in mind.
Human Rights, Development, and Local Communities
Investment disputes often affect people who are not parties to the arbitration. Local communities, workers, Indigenous peoples, environmental defenders, consumers, and public-service users may bear the consequences of the investment, the regulation, or the award. Yet traditional ISDS procedure gives primary standing to investors and states.
Human rights issues may arise in disputes involving land acquisition, displacement, water, extractive projects, pollution, labor rights, public health, privatized services, cultural heritage, Indigenous consultation, and security forces. Tribunals increasingly encounter arguments about human rights, but the investment treaty is often not designed to adjudicate community harms directly.
Development adds another layer. Investment treaties were often justified as tools to attract foreign direct investment. Empirical evidence on whether treaties increase investment is contested. Even where investment increases, the distribution of benefits matters: employment, technology transfer, tax revenue, local value addition, environmental protection, and policy autonomy all affect whether investment supports sustainable development.
Newer treaty models may include investor obligations, anti-corruption clauses, responsible business conduct language, sustainable-development provisions, counterclaims, or references to domestic law. The effectiveness of these clauses depends on enforceability, drafting precision, domestic institutions, and tribunal interpretation.
Treaty Reform, Termination, and Modernization
The investment treaty regime is in a period of reform. States are renegotiating treaties, terminating older agreements, adopting new model treaties, adding interpretive statements, narrowing substantive standards, clarifying indirect expropriation, preserving regulatory space, increasing transparency, creating appellate or court-like mechanisms, and experimenting with state-state control over interpretation.
UNCTAD has described the international investment agreement regime as being in flux, with reform focused on sustainable development, investment facilitation, policy space, procedural legitimacy, and balance between investor protection and public interest. Reform is not uniform. Some states remain committed to ISDS; others are moving away from it, limiting it, or replacing it with different mechanisms.
Termination is not always simple. Many treaties include survival or sunset clauses that continue protections for existing investments after termination. Withdrawal from a treaty may therefore reduce future exposure while leaving legacy claims possible. Coordinated termination or neutralization of sunset clauses may be required to fully change legal risk.
Reform also faces a distribution problem. Capital-exporting states, capital-importing states, developed economies, developing states, multinational enterprises, small and medium investors, civil society, and affected communities do not have identical interests. The legitimacy of reform depends on whether it addresses both procedural critique and structural inequality.
Case Studies in Practice
Philip Morris v. Uruguay
A public health dispute over tobacco packaging and regulation. The case is often cited in debates over the right to regulate and the ability of states to defend evidence-based health measures.
Vattenfall disputes
Energy-transition and environmental-permitting disputes involving Germany that illustrate how investment arbitration can intersect with nuclear policy, coal regulation, and climate governance.
Yukos awards
Large-scale arbitration arising from measures against a major energy company, illustrating damages scale, state conduct, enforcement, and the significance of the Energy Charter Treaty.
Eco Oro v. Colombia
A mining and environmental-protection dispute involving ecosystem protection and regulatory authority, often discussed in relation to environmental measures and investor expectations.
Case studies should not be reduced to slogans. A state victory does not prove ISDS is harmless; an investor victory does not prove regulation is impossible. Each case turns on treaty text, facts, procedure, evidence, tribunal reasoning, damages, and post-award enforcement. The value of case studies is that they reveal recurring patterns: expectations, permitting, transition policy, evidence of public purpose, damages exposure, and the difficulty of balancing investment-backed reliance with evolving regulation.
Lawyer-Facing Workflows
| Step | Question | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Treaty map | Which treaties, contracts, statutes, and rules apply? | Instrument matrix and jurisdiction checklist. |
| 2. Coverage | Is the claimant a protected investor with a protected investment? | Investor/investment memo. |
| 3. Consent and procedure | Has consent been perfected and procedural preconditions satisfied? | Forum and admissibility analysis. |
| 4. Merits | Which standards are allegedly breached and how are they defined? | Liability theory and defenses. |
| 5. Regulatory justification | What public purpose, evidence, process, and non-discrimination support the measure? | Right-to-regulate defense package. |
| 6. Damages | What is the real loss, causation, valuation, mitigation, and risk adjustment? | Damages model and exposure range. |
| 7. Settlement / reform | Can risk be managed through settlement, amendment, interpretive statement, or policy redesign? | Negotiation and policy options memo. |
This workflow is useful for both claimant and respondent analysis. Claimants must prove jurisdiction, breach, causation, and loss. Respondent states must preserve jurisdictional objections, build factual records, defend regulatory process, contest damages, and consider broader treaty-policy implications.
Common Analytical Pitfalls
Treating all treaties alike
Older BITs, modern model treaties, free-trade investment chapters, and sectoral treaties can differ dramatically.
Ignoring jurisdiction
Many disputes turn on consent, nationality, ownership, timing, legality of investment, or procedural preconditions.
Overstating legitimate expectations
Not every regulatory framework creates a guarantee of stability. Specific assurances matter.
Underestimating damages
Even weak merits claims can create settlement pressure if damages theories are large and defense costs are high.
Separating investment law from public law
Many claims arise from regulatory decisions, administrative procedure, permits, environmental review, public health, or emergency governance.
Ignoring reform context
Interpretation, drafting, termination, and treaty modernization are now central to the field.
GitHub Repository
The companion repository folder supports this article with structured research materials, source metadata, concept mapping, treaty-standard matrices, arbitration-procedure notes, reform references, and editorial documentation. It is intended to make the article’s research workflow more transparent while keeping the public article focused on legal explanation rather than technical setup.
Further Reading
- Alvarez, J.E. (2011) The Public International Law Regime Governing International Investment. Leiden: Brill.
- Dolzer, R., Kriebaum, U. and Schreuer, C. (2022) Principles of International Investment Law. 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Gaukrodger, D. and Gordon, K. (2012) Investor-State Dispute Settlement: A Scoping Paper for the Investment Policy Community. OECD Working Papers on International Investment. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/investment/internationalinvestmentagreements/WP-2012_3.pdf.
- Johnson, L., Sachs, L. and Sachs, J. (2015) Investor-State Dispute Settlement, Public Interest and U.S. Domestic Law. Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment. Available at: https://ccsi.columbia.edu/.
- Langford, M., Behn, D. and Fauchald, O.K. (eds.) (2018) The Legitimacy of Investment Arbitration: Empirical Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Newcombe, A. and Paradell, L. (2009) Law and Practice of Investment Treaties: Standards of Treatment. Alphen aan den Rijn: Kluwer Law International.
- Roberts, A. (2018) Incremental, Systemic, and Paradigmatic Reform of Investor-State Arbitration. American Journal of International Law, 112(3), pp. 410–432.
- Schill, S.W. (2009) The Multilateralization of International Investment Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Sornarajah, M. (2021) The International Law on Foreign Investment. 5th edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Van Harten, G. (2007) Investment Treaty Arbitration and Public Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
References
- Council of the European Union (2024) Energy Charter Treaty: EU Notifies Its Withdrawal. Available at: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024/06/27/energy-charter-treaty-eu-notifies-its-withdrawal/.
- Energy Charter Treaty (n.d.) Contracting Parties and Signatories. Available at: https://www.energychartertreaty.org/treaty/contracting-parties-and-signatories/.
- International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (1965) Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States. Available at: https://icsid.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/ICSID%20Convention%20English.pdf.
- International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (2022) ICSID Rules and Regulations. Available at: https://icsid.worldbank.org/resources/rules-and-regulations.
- UNCITRAL (2014) Rules on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration. Available at: https://uncitral.un.org/en/texts/arbitration/contractualtexts/transparency.
- UNCTAD (2026) The Reform of International Investment Agreements — State of Play. Available at: https://unctad.org/publication/reform-international-investment-agreements-state-play.
- UNCTAD (2025) World Investment Report 2025. Available at: https://unctad.org/publication/world-investment-report-2025.