International Investment Law

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Contracting Sovereignty? Greece’s Experiment with the Contractual Allocation of Maritime Delimitation Risk in Offshore Lease Agreements

June 26, 2026

Aikaterini Florou

In February 2026, Greece signed offshore lease agreements with a Chevron-led consortium for the exploration of oil and gas south of Crete. A month later, the agreements were ratified by the Greek Parliament, thereby acquiring binding force in domestic law. Turkey and Libya were quick to condemn the contracts as unlawful and as encroaching upon the areas covered by their Memorandum of Understanding on Delimitation of the Maritime Jurisdiction Areas in the Mediterranean.

From Trade to Investment: Can the ACWL Model Travel?

June 4, 2026

Bram Goede

UNCITRAL Working Group III has been seized with Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) reform for nearly ten years. Pursuing several initiatives in parallel, one project now entering its final stages is the Advisory Centre on International Investment Dispute Resolution (Advisory Centre). The Advisory Centre, as stated in Article 2 of its draft statute, aims to enhance the capacity…

Rewriting Article 422: Ecuador’s Constitutional Court, ISDS, and the Limits of Judicial Constitutional Change

May 6, 2026

Ladan Mehranvar

Introduction On 30 March 2026, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court issued Dictamen 19-25-TI/26A, conditionally approving the Agreement for the Promotion and Protection of Investments between Ecuador and the United Arab Emirates (the “UAE BIT”), including the investor-State dispute settlement (“ISDS”) mechanism established in Article 20. The ruling concludes a two-stage constitutional review: on 5 March 2026,…

Essential Security Interests Exceptions and the Limits of Self-Judgment: Implications of Riverside Coffee v Nicaragua

March 19, 2026

Fabian Eichberger

In recent years, national security has increasingly served as a justification to deviate from international law obligations. The ICSID award in Riverside Coffee v Nicaragua has added a new layer to the developing case law on the interplay between essential security interests exceptions and the notion of self-judgment in the context of investment arbitration. …

From Managed Trade to Managed Investment Through Trade

February 25, 2026

Victor Crochet

Tessa Sophie Hoffmann

Prior to the establishment of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), tariffs routinely functioned as deliberate instruments of industrial policy. By raising the cost of imports, States sought to channel foreign economic activity inland, effectively leaving exporters wishing to preserve market access with little alternative but to…

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Will the Morocco-Nigeria Bilateral Investment Treaty Transform Sustainable Development into Hard Law?

January 27, 2022

Klentiana Mahmutaj

The SDGs have now received virtually global endorsement. At the same time, new BITs have emerged which incorporate both the SDGs and the concept of sustainable development. This includes Morocco-Nigeria BIT 2016 (‘the Treaty’) which may prove to be the IIA that transforms sustainable development from a ‘mere’ political commitment or soft law into a hard legal obligation…

How a documentary film can help UNCITRAL Working Group III think through ISDS reform

April 10, 2024

Lorenzo Cotula

Ladan Mehranvar

As states explore options to reform investment treaties and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), they can draw on a growing body of grounded perspectives about how the system works in practice and how it is experienced by those involved in or affected by investment disputes. The Tribunal, a documentary film directed by Malcolm Rogge in collaboration…

People from La Oroya vs Peru, Inter-American Court of Human Rights: How Effective is International Law to Protect the Environment in Extractive Contexts?

April 11, 2024

José Saldaña

On March 22nd, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled a landmark decision on the protection of the right to a healthy environment in the context of mining activities. The Court declared the international responsibility of the Peruvian State for breaching the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, specifically for violations of the right to a…

Expropriation, Oil and the Prohibition on the Use of Force: Justification Narratives and the Effectiveness of International Law in the Venezuela Crisis

January 13, 2026

Julian Scheu

The US military intervention in Venezuela amounts to a manifest breach of the prohibition on the use of force under international law. Neither self-defence nor authorization by the UN Security Council can be invoked to justify the use of military force under these circumstances. The operation also clearly violates the principle of non-intervention, as it was explicitly aimed…