Part II Substantive Issues, Ch.13 Standards of Treatment

Subject(s):

Foreign Direct Investment — Investor — Investment — Regional organizations

This chapter revisits the principal developments of investment insurance at both the national and international level, and describes the evolution of the concept over the last fifty years or so. It considers the development of guarantees for investment from an historical perspective and how insurance mechanisms have evolved from purely national protection to an international protection system. It illustrates the concrete application of such mechanisms through a recent case involving foreign investors and different national guarantee systems. The chapter focuses on two national mechanisms: the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Swiss Investment Risk Guarantee Agency. A regional instrument—the Inter-Arab Investment Guarantee Corporation—is discussed, that is considered to be the first international guarantee organization and that is one of the two existing regional schemes with the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI). Finally, the chapter focuses on the World Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), one of the most important initiatives in the domain of international investment along with the creation of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).