Signing international investment treaties, in the hope of attracting foreign investments, has been a central strategy for governments looking to improve economic development. The less known side of this story is that by signing investment treaties, governments are giving away the sovereign right to regulate in the interest of people and the environment. They also expose themselves to the risk of spending millions in law suits that could have been used to serve public needs. It’s time that the dark side of investment is put under the spotlight. Governments around the world adopted the recipe wholesale and Investment Treaties have mushroomed over the last 2 decades.
However, as you can download the said report on the dark side of these Investment Agreements from this hyperlink a lot of things have been prevailing behind the seen as they have been long overlooked thus:
- Investment agreements allocate to one side (the governments) all the duties and obligations and to the other (the corporations) all the rights and protection.
- Investment agreements allow multinationals to sue governments at secretive international arbitration tribunals when these governments try to regulate in favour of the public interest. However, governments can not take any action at international level against multinationals if they commit human rights abuses or environmental damage, or simply fail to fulfil their commitments.
- Investment agreements grant corporations risk-free investments
The back side of investments agreements can be heard from the below video clip:
The room in open for stakeholders in land governance advocacy to keep on intervening for a win-win or sustainable land based investment in the country.