This paper is part of IISD's series entitled "The Best Practice Advisory Bulletin" which aims at making publicly available "best practice" analyses based on actual treaty texts, in order to provide developing and developed country negotiators with state-of-the-art options and approaches to address the new issues and controversies in investment negotiations.
This bulletin on Fair and Equitable Treatment (FET) examines the main approaches for defining fair and equitable treatment in international investment agreements (IIAs), and their implications for development policy space. It also identifies best practice approaches in recent IIAs for including FET. The rapid rise of investor-state arbitrations challenging state violations of IIAs has revealed the complexity behind the FET obligation. In fact, the FET standard has emerged as "the most relied upon and successful basis for a treaty claim" for investors.
