Application of Most-Favoured-Nation Clauses to Dispute Settlement Provisions of Bilateral Investment Treaties : An Assessment of the Jurisprudence

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) provide investors in natural resource projects with stability. Specifically, dispute settlement provisions, a feature of most modern BITs, allow investors to make claims against the host state for alleged breaches of the BIT However, some such provisions establish limits or preconditions with respect to the ability of investors to access international arbitration. Recently, investors have invoked the most-favoured-nation (MFN) clauses of BITs in an attempt to avoid those limits or preconditions. This issue has proven to be very contentious and arbitral tribunals have come to different conclusions with some tribunals willing to extend MFN protection to an investor's procedural rights and others refusing to do so. This article examines the diverging lines of arbitral jurisprudence on this issue and highlights the opposing positions of a doctrinal divide regarding the scope and applicability of MFN protection