Lorena Guzmán-Díaz & Gary J. Shaw

(Lisa Sachs, Jesse Coleman & Lise Johnson eds., 2020) (on file with authors).

Australia recently became the sixth State to ratify the United Nations Convention on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration, better known as the Mauritius Convention, signaling another State’s acceptance for the UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency. While Australia’s endorsement is a positive step towards greater transparency in investor-State arbitration, it is a relatively small step. The Rules themselves have not been widely used in arbitration since they were adopted in 2013, while the Mauritius Convention has only garnered six ratifications in six years. This Article aims to address why that may be. The research tracks how states have reacted to the Transparency Rules and the Mauritius Convention since they came into effect almost a decade ago. The authors then offer conclusions on why states are reacting in these ways.