Human Rights and Investment Disciplines: Integration in Progress

Abstract

Foreign investment law and human rights law are usually considered, be it by scholars or by arbitrators, as wholly distinct, autonomous or even antagonistic legal domains – this perception partaking to and seemingly reinforcing the very fashionable and catch-all concept of “fragmentation”. The present chapter will assess the extent to which such a claim may be warranted analyzing the relations between international investment law and human rights law from the perspective of their - respective - origins, contents, and means of adjudication. We show that these two areas of public international law are being increasingly integrated through a process that is ceasing to be one-sided (either from the perspective of investment law or human rights) to become more even-handed, i.e. providing increasing room for considerations of human rights in investment disputes and, conversely, providing increasing space for the protection of foreign investment in human rights disputes. Given the focus of the present volume on international investment law, however, our analysis takes the perspective of investment tribunals referring only briefly, as relevant, to that of human rights courts.