DECISION OF ALBA-PTA ON ICSID

Member countries (Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua) of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) and Peoples’ Trade Agreements (PTA) have emphatically rejected legal, diplomatic and media pressure exercised by some multinational companies, which having made vulnerable constitutional rules, national laws, contractual obligations, regulatory environmental and labour resolutions, resist the application of sovereign rules by threatened countries by initiating international arbitration against national states for example within ICSID, the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.

As a result, the States who form ALBA-PTA have decided to withdraw together from the ICSID convention in order to guarantee the sovereign right of countries to regulate foreign investment on their national territories.

Source: Pablo Solon (chief negotiator on integration for the Bolivian Government) This paragraph was approved in the Fifth ALBA-PTA summit.