marziyeh tahmasebi

BITs and practice of investment arbitration tribunals have taken steps to reinforce human rights in international investment law, although it will be gradual and requires cooperation with contracting parties and efforts at the international level. This paper adopts a descriptive- analytical method and tries to provide solutions to overcome the obstacles that hinder human rights development by pointing to these challenges in the international investment law system.Research findings indicate that international investment law has paid attention to human rights in the way of promoting international investment flow. Despite development and promotion of human rights and human rights obligations in the international investment law in the last few decades, this issue has always been facing challenges and obstacles. The challenges have political and jurisdiction nature, and require different decisions in the same cases. It seems that solutions such as the codification of a multilateral international treaty on foreign investment, and awards rendered in accordance with the human rights obligations and arbitral practice could address the mentioned challenges.

One of the serious concerns of human rights institutions is legal deficiencies of international investment law that could undermine human rights support. The most important way to address this problem is to benefit from the procedures of international investment arbitration. This paper tries to analyze the relation between human rights and international investment law through the analysis of awards issued by ICSID tribunal in the field of human rights, and illustrates the amount of human rights considerations in those awards and contributes to the development and promotion of human rights in international investment law. It is notable that the arbitral practice is positively engaging with human rights obligations of investors. However, it must be recognized that approaches of ICSID investment tribunal towards human rights are not yet based on a fixed procedure. It must be admitted that the development of investment law arbitration on human rights will be a gradual approach.