Investment tribunals rarely examine host state arguments based on international human rights law in great depth. The ICSID award Urbaser v Argentina is the first to provide a detailed discussion of a host state’s human rights counterclaim. Hence, this decision presents an opportunity to more fully understand the role of human rights in investment arbitration. As the…

Edward Guntrip is a Lecturer in Commercial Law at the University of East Anglia. Investment law jurisprudence has failed to fully explore the relationship between international investment law and international human rights law (for example, see the cursory examination given in Vivendi v. Argentina para 262 and Pezold v.