International Investment Agreements

They have developed principles to guide investment policies in accelerating progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 57 countries.

Reforms are essential to ensure investment treaties and associated investor-state disputes don’t hinder countries’ efforts to tackle climate change.

Developing countries could lose out on tax revenues due to capacity and legal constraints on the implementation of needed reforms, UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2022 says.

The data set, provided free of charge, covers all known cases of treaty-based investor-state arbitrations as of July 2020.

UNCTAD upgrades a reform package to realign international investment governance with global sustainability targets.

There is a pressing need for systematic reform of the international investment agreements (IIAs) regime to bring it in line with today's sustainable development imperative. Today the question is not whether or not to reform, but about the what, how and extent of such reform.

States' recent steps to reform the international investment regime, aligning it with today's sustainable development imperative, were at the centre of discussion at a Conference, co-organized by UNCTAD and CCSI, in New York on 10-11 November 2015.

Speakers at the UNCTAD 62nd Trade and Development Board said that international investment agreements must preserve States' abilities to adopt policies that support the SDGs. A better balance between the rights and obligations of investors and host States are needed, as are improved arbitration mechanisms.

This year’s World Investment Report, the 25th in the series, aims to inform global debates on the future of the international policy environment for cross-border investment.

​More than 50 high-level representatives from governments, the private sector and civil society convened in Geneva on 16 October to address the challenges arising from international investment agreements (IIAs) and consider ways to reform the international investment policy regime at a United Nations meeting held during UNCTAD's World Investment Forum at the Palais des Nations.