International Dispute Resolution

The IDR team has conducted a multi-year research project focusing on the use of ISDS conciliation and mediation in ISDS, particularly based on the need to amicably settle disputes rather than engage in costly and protracted arbitration proceedings. Project outputs have included:

• An ICSID Review article, based on a comprehensive study of conciliation and mediation in the ISDS provisions of 1141 investment treaties. A pre-publication version of the article may be downloaded here.
  • The abstract summarising the article is available here.
  • The key policy recommendations of the article are available here.
  • The dataset on which the article was based has been published on the CIL website as a Working Paper.
• A Working Paper that examines historic and less well-known investment treaty practices on conciliation, to inform future treaty provisions on conciliation and mediation. 
• An annotated bibliography on Investor-State Conciliation and Mediation in Oxford Bibliographies in International Law (2021), based on the most extensive literature review to date on this topic.
  • A longer form of the bibliography has been published on the CIL website as a Working Paper.
• A Jus Mundi wiki note, a Kluwer Arbitration Blog post, and various presentations on the ICSID Review article.

The Investor-State Mediation and Conciliation research project built on previous work that the CIL has done on conciliation of international disputes, including:

• A 2017 conference on the use of conciliation to resolve inter-State disputes
• A 2018 study of the dispute settlement mechanisms available in Major Multilateral Treaties
• A 2019 working paper describing the results of a survey on the obstacles to amicable settlement of investor-State disputes