Abstract

The intersection between foreign investment and human rights is gaining attention, as is evident from an increasing number of investment treaty awards analysing legal issues relating to human rights. In the recent International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) arbitration of Bear Creek v Peru, Philippe Sands QC posited, in a dissenting opinion, that the investor’s contribution to events—ie protests against its allegedly adverse environmental impact and disregard of indigenous rights, namely resulting from its ‘inability to obtain a “social licence”’—which led to the unlawful expropriation of its investment, was ‘significant and material’. He further noted that the investor’s ‘responsibilities are no less than those of the government’ and found that damages should thus be reduced. Last year, the Netherlands adopted a new model bilateral investment treaty (BIT), which allows tribunals to ‘take into account non-compliance by the investor with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises’ when assessing damages. These recent developments shed light on how states and tribunals, as part of their decision-making process, can take into account human rights in practice, and crucially in respect of damages analyses. By first dissecting the concept of contributory fault, then shedding light on the intersection of investment treaty law and human rights, as elucidated in recent jurisprudence, this article questions whether there now exists a gateway for human rights obligations (soft or hard) in the investment treaty arbitration realm through the concept of contributory fault.

中文翻译：

---

国际法下的共同过失：ISDS的人权之门？

摘要

外国投资与人权之间的交集日益受到关注，从分析与人权有关的法律问题的越来越多的投资条约裁决中可以明显看出这一点。在最近的国际投资争端解决中心（ICSID）的Bear Creek诉秘鲁仲裁中，Philippe Sands QC持不同意见，认为投资者对事件做出了贡献，即抗议其所谓的不利环境影响和对土著权利的无视，这是由于其“无法获得“社会许可””导致的。非法征收其投资是“重大和重大”的。他进一步指出，投资者的“责任不低于政府的责任”，并因此认为应减少损失。去年，荷兰通过了一项新的双边投资条约范本（BIT），该条约允许法庭在评估时“考虑到投资者未遵守《联合国企业与人权指导原则》和《经合组织跨国企业准则》”的情况。损害赔偿。这些最新的进展为各州和法庭如何 作为其决策过程的一部分，可以在实践中尤其是在损害赔偿分析方面考虑到人权。通过首先剖析共同过错的概念，然后阐明投资条约法与人权的交集，正如最近的判例所阐明的那样，本文对现在投资中是否存在人权义务的途径（软性或硬性）提出了质疑。共同过错概念的条约仲裁领域。