The human side of protecting foreign investment

Abstract

This article looks at the human side of protecting foreign investment in the sense that it zooms onto the role stereotypes play in the development of the relation between human rights and investment law. I demonstrate that international human rights law not only protects from discrimination based on stereotypes but also creates and reiterates stereotypes. These stereotypes may entrench differences between communities but also bear potential for new convergences. I argue that we need to focus on the humans producing the transnational legal discourse and the process of normalisation of those humans in order to destabilise stereotypes that hinder possible convergences of human rights and investment community. In short, this paper explores in what way international law's stereotypes encourage convergence or divergence in transnational legal discourse on the intersection between human rights and investment law.