Abstract:
Foreign investment is regulated by different legal frameworks both at national and international levels. Internationally, the legal framework which governs such investment includes International Investment Agreements (hereinafter referred as IIA). IIA are the most common tools for the promotion and protection of foreign investment. By IIA we are mainly referring to multilateral and bilateral investment agreements, though the former is non-existent in a binding form. The increasing trend/use of IIA in the foreign investment arena and the fact that contents are important means by which IIA objectives are given effect makes it critical to question as to their overall nature and common contents. Thus, this paper tries to make review on the common contents of IIA. In doing so, it tries to describe and examine the common contents, specific statements in the common contents, the variations and recent development such as environmental concerns. The paper argues that even if there could be some variations in the detail, IIA shares common contents and it also argues that the contents of IIA more or less are designed in such a way to benefit the capital exporting countries by avoiding investment restriction. Furthermore, the paper argues that recent concerns are getting increasing attention in the contents of IIA than before.
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