Pakistan’s policy on ICSID arbitration

Over the last few decades, the ICSID arbitration tribunals have produced a bulk of cases interpreting various standard BIT provisions, explaining and redefining the BIT jurisprudence, and in that light countries have changed their BIT practice and domestic policies to avoid disputes with foreign investors. This did not happen in Pakistan. In the light of emerging international BIT practice, this paper discusses three sets of FDI policies that Pakistan should adopt in order to avoid ICSID cases in the future: 1) the dispute prevention policy; 2) the alternatives to ICSID policy; and 3) the model BIT policy.