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Volume 3 Contents
Articles
- State of Necessity as a Justification for Internationally Wrongful Conduct by Roman Boed
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- Toward the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights: Better Late than Never by Nsongurua J. Udombana
Abstract | PDF
- Guatemala's Peace Accords in a Free Trade Area of the Americas by Gus Van Harten
International investment agreements are increasingly being negotiated worldwide. Advocates assure that, by providing stable and predictable rule, such agreements spur economic growth and development, bringing greater prosperity to rich and poor countries alike. By "disciplining" governments' ability to regulate foreign investment, however, they may also threaten sovereignty and democratic accountability to domestic popular choices. Gus Van Harten argues that the heightened standards of investor protection embodied in recent international agreements may give foreign investors unwarranted leverage to influence political decisonmaking and thus constrain the scope of governments' freedom to pursue national strategies for development, human rights, and reform. As a compelling illustration, he highlights the recent negotiations toward a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and its potential effect on the ability of the Guatemalan government to fulfill its commitments under the historic 1996 Peace Accords. The Accords, concluded with the participation of broad sectors of civil society, commit the State to pursue critical measures in the areas of human rights verification, agrarian reform, social investment in health and education, demilitarization, indigenous rights, and resettlement of uprooted populations. Following thirty-six years of bloody civil war, deepening poverty, and systematic human rights abuse by state authorities, the Accords represent an important chance for the consolidation of democracy in Guatemala. Social stability, however, depends in large part on whether the commitments under the Accords are actually fulfilled. Based on an anticipatory analysis of the arguments that investors might use under an FTAA investor-to-state mechanism, Van Harten contends that the threat of investor challenges under the FTAA investment agreement may undermine the hard-won Government commitments to pursue crucial land-related and other socio-economic reforms under the Peace Accords. To avoid this outcome, he urges FTAA negotiators to ensure that clear rules are established not only for the protection of the investors, but also for the valid exercise of state regulation of foreign investment where the risk of constraining legitimate democratic choices is simply too great.
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New Developments
- The World Bank's Draft Comprehensive Development Framework and the Micro-Paradigm of Law and Development by Richard Cameron Blake
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- Debt Relief in 1999: Only One Step on a Long Journey by Eric A. Friedman
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Masthead
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