Speaker's Bio:
José E. Alvarez, the Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law at New York University Law School and the faculty director of its US-Asia Law Institute, is a former President of the American Society of International Law and a prior co-editor-in-chief of the American Journal of International Law. Prof. Alvarez is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Institut de Droit International, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He was awarded the American Society of International Law’s highest honor, the Manley Hudson Medal, in 2024. His 7 books and more than 170 other publications address diverse aspects of international law and theory, including the norm-setting powers of international organizations, forms of accountability in the wake of mass atrocity, the challenges and prospects of the international investment regime, and the functions of international courts. His most recent book is Women' s Property Rights Under CEDAW(co-authored with Judith Bauder) (OUP 2024).
Abstract:
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be seen as a reaction to International Investment Agreements (IIAs) which, in the views of many, have unduly protected the rights of foreign investors at the expense of their host states 'right to regulate.’ In recent years, a number of countries have‘re-balanced’their IIAs to narrow investors’rights and expand host states’rights to regulate, particularly to better protect the latter's abilities to advance sustainable development. But there is no sign that either the old-fashioned IIAs nor the reformed ones will be able to increase transnational capital flows to fill the over 4 trillion USD annual investment gap needed to fulfill the SDGs. My contention that IIAs need a far more radical set of reforms: they need to be restructured to enforce the duties to regulate to advance the SDGs that states have previously agreed to, particularly in human rights treaties. IIAs need to encourage and protect SDG friendly capital flows.
