Database: Governments supporting the reform of international trade and investment treaties

There is a rise of unilateral trade measures, including the Climate Border Adjustment Measures (CBAM), which discriminate against developing countries by unilaterally imposing sustainability standards on their exports, which threaten not only their exports but production processes within their economies. Such measures should be stopped.

Strengthening the special and differential treatment for developing countries as a multilateral principle and ensuring transfer of technology to deliver on sustainable development.

Eliminate immediately all laws and regulations with extraterritorial impact and all other forms of coercive economic measures, including unilateral sanctions, against developing countries and emphasize that such actions not only undermine the principles enshrined in the Charter of the UN and international law but also severely threaten the freedom of trade and investment.

Express concern about trade restrictive measures imposed under the guise of environmental protection as they hinder free and fair trade, and violate the principles of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and Equity and Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), in light of different national circumstances, thus negatively impacting developing countries.

Commit to reforming international investment treaties as well as the investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms, and launch a working group under UN auspices to this end.

Call for UNCTAD to step up support for developing countries in relation to investment treaties

Stressing that the significance of the principle of special and differential treatment for all developing countries in harnessing the developmental benefit of international trade.

Recognise that old generation international investment treaties hamper developing countries ability to pursue public policy objectives and raise risk of investor-state disputes.

Pursue a multilateral approach for the reform of Investor-State-Dispute Settlement provision in international investment agreements.

While fully acknowledging the critical importance of addressing climate change, we reaffirm the imperative to ensure that climate actions, whether undertaken unilaterally or collaboratively, do not unfairly discriminate against any trading partners or serve as disguised barriers to international trade.

The adoption of sustainability standards by some countries should avoid the creation of non-tariff barriers to trade, comply with each country’s national criteria and promote sustainable production chains, but not at the expense of sovereignty or the right to development.

Moreover, many developing countries face unilateral coercive measures, which not only undermine the principles enshrined in the UN Charter and international law but also severely threaten the freedom of trade and investment, invariably disrupting trade flows, exacerbating poverty, racial and gender inequalities, and hindering development efforts in targeted countries. There is an urgent need for their elimination.

Most of the new generation of international investment agreements aim to preserve space for governments to develop public policies (“right to regulate”). (...) Notably, it does not include Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions, relying instead solely on State-State dispute settlement. There have been several instances where public environmental policies, for example, were hampered by court rulings that resulted in costly compensations. Some countries are even discussing the possibility of devising carve-outs to exclude the environmental sector from investor-state litigation. Thus, we believe the topic of the relationship between investor-state litigation and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda could be included in the preparatory process of FfD4. It also bears a relationship with the mobilization of domestic resources. If governments have to pay high sums in litigation cases, this creates additional budget constraints and makes the implementation of the 2030 Agenda even more difficult.