International Investment Law and Social Rights: Interactions and Encounters

Abstract

Over the past decades, it has become evident that international investment law interacts in various ways with human rights, beyond the mere common roots of both sets of norms. While foreign investment can be generally beneficial to the respect for and the progressive realization of social rights, the interlinkage between social rights and foreign investment has more often than not been discussed in the context of the conflicts between a state’s obligation to ensure respect of social rights, and the protection of foreign investment. In principle both sets of norms can co-exist without any normative friction. But the lack of automatic conflict between these two sets of norms does not imply that there cannot be, in casu, a conflict between the host state’s human rights obligations and those in relation to investment treaties. This chapter looks broadly at how interactions and conflicts between social rights and foreign investment and the international protection thereof can occur.