This book offers insights into how international investment law (IIL) has frustrated states´ protection of human rights in Latin America, and IIL has generally abstained from dealing with inter-regime frictions. In these circumstances, this study not only argues that IIL should be an object of contention and debate ( politicisation´). It also contends that Latin American countries have traditionally been the frontrunners in the politicisation of international legal instruments protecting foreign investment, questioning whether the paradigms informing their claims´ articulation are adequate to frame this debate. It demonstrates that the so-called right to regulate´ is the paradigm now prevalently used to challenge IIL, but that it is inadequate from a human rights perspective. Hence, the book calls for a re-politicisation of IIL in Latin America through a re-conceptualization of how states´ regulation of foreign investment is understood under international human rights law, which entails viewing it as an international duty. After determining what the duty to regulate´ constitutes in relation to the right to water and indigenous peoples´ right to lands based on human rights doctrine, the book analyses the extent to which Latin American countries are currently re-politicising IIL through an articulation of this international duty, and arbitral tribunals´ responses to their argumentative strategies. Based on these findings, the book not only proposes investment treaties´ reform to anchor the duty to regulate´ paradigm in IIL, and in the process, to induce tribunals´ engagement with human rights arguments when they come to underpin respondent states´ defences in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). In addition, drawing upon the (now likely defunct) idea of creating a regional ISDS tribunal, the book briefly reflects on options available to such a tribunal in terms of dealing with troubling normative/institutional interactions between regimes during ISDS proceedings.
