A Study On Incorporating Corporate Social Responsibility Into International Investment Treaty

With the globalization of economy, international investments have experienced a mushrooming development, which gives rise to the demand of liberalization and security of investment. Numerous investment treaties have emerged to satisfy such demand. Undoubtedly, investments can largely promote the economic development. However, at the same time, they also have made a negative impact on the social aspect of the host country, such as on the labor standards, environments and corruption. As the most important legal tool of the international investment law, international investment treaties tend to provide high-level standards of investment protection clauses, while pay little attention to the social responsibility of investor in protecting the labor rights, and environment and anti-corruption. This is contrary to the tendency of humanism of international law which focus on the environment, human rights etc. The international community is seeking for the way to make up for the deficiency of investment treaty in the social aspect.Based on the above-mentioned background, this article is to study on the legal issue of integrating the investor social responsibility into the international investment treaty. The first chapter is mainly an overview of the concept of the international investment treaty and corporate social responsibility. Apart from that, this chapter is trying to find out the reasons why link the investment treaty with the corporate social responsibility. On one hand, the humanism of international law requires not only focusing on the economic development, but also on the accompanying social issues. On the other, the international investments have already damaged the social benefit in certain degree, and thus it’s necessary to response the social issue in the investment treaty. The second chapter is to analyze the related provisions in the investment treaty and the protection of social benefit in the investment arbitration, finding that both the substantial provisions and the investment arbitrations exist defects in protecting the social benefit. Considering that investor is the direct subject impacting on the social benefits in the investment aspect, it’s natural to response the above defects through incorporating the investor social responsibility. The following chapter put forwards three different methods to incorporate investor social responsibility into the investment treaty. The effect and operation difficulty of every method is totally different. Contracting states can select the most appropriate method based on their specific domestic situations.