Roundtable on Risks of the UK-Colombia investment agreement on human rights, development and peace in Colombia
- goffej
- May 14
- 3 min read
Organised by the PHRG, Trade Justice Movement, War on Want, Global Justice Now!, Justice for Colombia and ABColombia.
Speakers:
H.E. Roy Barreras - Ambassador of Colombia to the UK
Nick Crook - Head of International, Unison
Louise Winstanley - Programme and Advocacy Manager, ABColombia
Tom Wills – Director, Trade Justice Movement
Chair: Fabian Hamilton MP – Chair, PHRG
Summary:
This roundtable discussion highlighted the negative impacts of the inclusion of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism in the Colombia-UK Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) on peace, human rights and development in Colombia, as well as the need to remove the ISDS clause in any future agreement.
Main points:
The Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause of the Colombia-UK BIT allows UK-based companies to sue the Colombian Government in an international arbitration tribunal, in private, when such companies deem their profits are being threatened by the Colombian Government’s policies.
More generally, the ISDS mechanism, included in 2000+ treaties currently in force worldwide, is criticised for providing companies with a disproportionate legal advantage over states.
Colombia has been subject to 25 ISDS claims in the last decade in connection with various investment treaties - including three by UK companies further to the Colombia-UK BIT. These claims include those brought by mining companies Glencore and Anglo American, following the disruption of their projects over indigenous community rights and environmental protection.
With the Colombia-UK BIT now having reached the end of its initial ten-year term, there is an opportunity for renegotiation or termination of the Treaty, and therefore a possibility to remove or amend the ISDS clause.
The Colombia-UK BIT ISDS has negatively impacted upon labour rights in Colombia, with this mechanism also having impacted labour rights globally.
The ISDS has had a chilling effect on the adoption of policies for the implementation of Colombia’s 2016 Peace Accord, and related reforms, such as those related to the Labour Code, and ISDS cases have drained Colombia’s finances, which could have been dedicated to the implementation of the Accord and those reforms.
ISDSs are increasingly being questioned globally, with states having withdrawn from 250 investment treaties in the last five years up to 2023, as they increasingly fear, inter alia, the consequences of such mechanisms when seeking to address the climate crisis. The UK Government withdrew last year from the Energy Charter Treaty, which contained an ISDS mechanism, on the basis that “[r]emaining a member … could even penalise us for our world-leading efforts to deliver net zero.”
Some argue that the rejection of ISDSs can be economically damaging, discouraging Foreign Direct Investment (FID). However, a 2020 study found that the effect of investment treaties on FDI is ‘so small as to be considered zero’. Brazil is the largest recipient of FDI in Latin America, and the only country in that region which has never signed a treaty containing ISDS.
David Boyd, a former UN Special Rapporteur has stated: “ISDS has become a major obstacle to the urgent actions needed to address the planetary environmental and human rights crises.”
Some UK parliamentarians have already begun to call on the UK Government to enter negotiations over the Treaty. In January 2024, Lord Browne led an oral question, during which peers from all sides expressed their disquiet about the impact of ISDS on Colombia and elsewhere.
The PHRG supports the renegotiation or termination of the ISDS mechanism within the UK-Colombia BIT, to protect human and environmental rights and to uphold the implementation of the 2016 Peace Accord in Colombia, and will advance this in its interactions with relevant interlocutors.
Comments