Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id760492943
This system allows foreign investors to bypass local courts and defend their “rights” at international tribunals that are typically comprised of three professional arbitrators (who may have side jobs such as lawyers and advisers to corporations). They adjudicate whether states have breached investor protections under international trade treaties and other legal documents, like contracts, that have these provisions.
id760492789
Honduras was one of twenty-one developing countries, primarily from Latin America, that voted against the creation of ICSID at World Bank meetings in Tokyo in September 1964.
id760492788
The new system would give the foreign investor, by virtue of the fact that he is a foreigner, the right to sue a sovereign state outside its national territory, dispensing with the courts of law. This provision is contrary to the accepted legal principles of our country and, de facto, would confer a privilege on the foreign investor, placing the nationals of the country concerned in a position of inferiority.
id760492910
Today countries including Honduras seem to have few good options: facilitate transnational capital, including through carve-outs of their territories, laws, and independence, or be disciplined by it. That the World Bank has facilitated this, under an official mission to end global poverty, only adds insult to injury.