Human Rights Obligations in Bilateral Investment Treaties – The South Asian Experience

Animesh Das

 

ABSTRACT: The current literatures point towards an ongoing discourse on the connection between international investment law and human rights obligations of the foreign investors. While the academic scholarship and the international organizations have produced works suggesting a strong interface between the two the arbitral tribunals have maintained a considerable weak position. Considering such a situation at point, this paper undertakes to study the content of the investors’ human rights obligations in the South Asian BITs. While scholarly literature on South Asian investment regime has grown manifold in the last few years, literature on human rights interface have been neglected. South Asia lately have become a favourable investment destination but has also found a top spot in terms of ISDS claims filed against the South Asian countries. The subject matter of the claims are mostly the regulatory measures taken by the South Asian countries. Thereby the paper objectivises to understand situations, where, in absence of express provision on human rights obligations, whether South Asian Countries during necessity can exercise regulatory powers to take a human rights-related measure. The paper concludes that the substantial content of human rights obligations in the South Asian BITs is less and in any case of potential human rights violations by the investors, the South Asian Countries are likely to remain petrified due to tremendous regulatory chill.