Summary: 1. Introduction. – 2. International Investment Law Development. – 3. Critical Issues Affecting the International Investment Regime. – 3.1. The purpose of the international investment regime. – 3.2. The scope of the international investment agreements. – 3.2.1. The meaning of foreign ‘investment’. – 3.2.2. The circumstances in which an investor is a ‘foreign’. – 3.2.3. Coverage of state-controlled entities (SCE). – 3.2.4. Temporal scope of treaties. – 3.2.5. Express exclusions from the scope of IIAs. – 3.3. The substantive content of investment disciplines. – 3.3.1. The controversial meaning of investment-protection standards. – 3.3.2. The interlink between investment protection and the right to regulate. – 3.3.3. Investment liberalisation commitments. – 3.3.4. Disciplines on host state and foreign investors. – 3.4. International investment arbitration. – 3.4.1. The ‘process’ and ‘outcome’ of investment arbitration. – 3.4.2. The principal users of investment arbitration and any other stakeholders. – 3.5. Managing multiple legal sources. – 3.6. The institutional structure of the international investment regime. – 4. Recommendations to Resolve Current Issues in the International Investment Regime. – 5. Conclusions and Recommendations.
Background: Given the lack of development in the International Investment Law (IIL) and its increase of substantive and procedural challenges, this paper identifies those issues and challenges and provide suggests solutions to these challenges.
Methods: The procedures to be followed in obtaining information concerning the adequacy of IIL and its effectiveness. The article will look at the logical method, comparative method, and historical method. After data collection using these methods, the data will be analysed; accordingly, a comparison will be carried out between different international investment legal instruments to establish the gaps and development opportunities. A logical method will be applied to data collection. It is an analysis methodology that combines concepts and ideas. A historical method will be used to collect data and facts from records, to investigate the competence of international investment legal instruments over time. The researcher will explain the history of international investment legal instruments to show the importance of law development.
Results and Conclusions: The development of a unified global convention that is formatted to provide a uniform and neutral set of substantive and procedural rules to regulate international investments would, in fact, meet the optimal objectives of the state and investor in the most appropriate manner according to the current legal investment instruments.