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Capacity Building

The increased complexity and importance of international investment agreements has not, to date, been met with the requisite increased capacity of developing countries to negotiate and fully understand these agreements, or to fully appreciate what must be done to comply with them afterwards. This lack of capacity has been formally recognized at the global level on multiple occasions.

But this recognition has not been followed with sufficient or critical action. The need is more urgent now than ever, both to address multiple levels of bilateral and regional negotiations and the rising tide of arbitrations these agreements have produced.

Among the key capacities needed are:

• a sound understanding of the current state of the main elements of international investment law;

• a strong knowledge of the workings of the investor-state dispute settlement processes;

• awareness of current trends in new investment agreements;

• clarity on why these trends are emerging;

• the ability to identify national objectives in this field through critical and creative thinking;

• strong negotiating skills to be able to achieve these national objectives;

• the capacity to deal with the arbitrations that are commenced against developing countries; and

• an understanding of compliance issues under existing investment agreements.

Our capacity building activities

• Biwater v. Tanzania
  Biwater v. Tanzania is an investor state arbitration under the UK-Tanzania bilateral investment treaty. It concerns a failed water privatization in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

  IISD along with the Center for International Environment Law (CIEL) is working with three Tanzanian based NGOs to make a joint amicus curiae intervention in the Biwater v. Tanzania investor-state arbitration. To support the capacity building aspect of this particular amicus process, IISD hosted a three-day workshop with counsel for the three Tanzanian NGOs, CIEL and IISD. The workshop reviewed in detail the underlying facts of the case, possible legal strategies and set out a fully developed outline for the amicus curiae submission.

  • Petition for Amicus Status (PDF - 221 kb)

  • Decision: IISD and four other NGOs were granted standing to submit written briefs in the Biwater v. Tanzania arbitration (PDF - 915 kb)

Contents

• First Annual Forum for Developing Country Investment Negotiators
  In October 2007 IISD and the Singapore-based Centre on Asia and Globalisation convened a gathering of developing country investment negotiators, to network and compare notes, to brush up on the latest legal developments and to thing strategically about how best to balance the need for FDI and the need to accomplish other domestic policy objectives, such as those related to development and environment. All the meeting materials are available on line.

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