Friday, March 5, 2010

The Count


61...

...Is the percentage of all mining lawsuits by international investors against governments currently taking place in Latin America.

Free Trade Agreements and Bilateral Investment Treaties often include provisions that allow investors to bypass domestic courts and sue governments directly in the International Court of Settlement and Investment Dispute (ICSID), housed at the World Bank. That's right, with these provisions in hand investors can seek compensation for lost profits resulting from, say, laws pertaining to the environment, public health, labor rights or controls on dangerous capital inflows.

In recent years, as the big "61" above suggests, mining companies in Latin America have taken particular advantage of this shady legal mechanism, accounting for 20 of the 33 ongoing ICSID cases.

1 comment:

  1. nice piccy. RSSed yer tushes, dudes. Hope you can get me to link you loads.

    (word verif "pocakee", which sounds cool)

    ReplyDelete