If your foreign subsidiary finds itself at the receiving end of unfair treatment by the host government, you may want to see if you might be protected by an investment treaty.

Is your first step in such circumstances to instruct specialist lawyers? It does not need to be. It is relatively easy to find out if there is a treaty between your home state and the host state of the investment which may protect your investment.

Possibly the most comprehensive (and certainly the easiest to use) publicly available database of investment treaties is provided by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). As navigating to the right place through their website can be a bit tricky, here is a link directly to the International Investment Agreements Navigator.

On the navigator you can filter treaties by country, which allows you to see not only the bilateral investment treaties, but also multilateral treaties with investment provisions, to which the host state of your investment is a party. Helpfully, the database will tell you when the treaties came into force and give you links to the text in available languages.

Also, UNCTAD provides a comprehensive database of (domestic) investment protection laws that are in force around the globe, and that may protect your investment in addition to international treaties. These are regular national laws that in many cases provide for foreign investment protections which are similar to those under international treaties. The Investment Law Navigator is available here.

If you cannot find what you are looking for in the UNCTAD database, there are other places you may consult:

Many countries still file their treaties with the United Nations Treaty Series, and while their interface is much less user friendly than UNCTAD’s, you sometimes can find treaties that UNCTAD does not host.

Many states also provide public access to their own treaties, usually on the website of their ministries of foreign affairs or international trade (by way of example, here are the treaties of Finland, and Germany). In such cases, a classic Google search for the terms “[home or host country]” and “investment protection treaty” is a place to start – preferably in the language of the country whose treaties you are searching for. However, make sure to only rely on official resources, such as official ministry or parliament webpages.

If you still do not find a treaty (or domestic law) that would protect your investment (and remember that if there are intermediate entities in the ownership chain, your interests may be entitled to protection under several countries’ treaties), the last resort could be to contact your government, or the embassy in the host state of your investment. They should be able to tell you conclusively whether an investment treaty is in force between your home state and the host state.

Our recommendation would be that you find out about your rights early on, so that you can realistically evaluate your options and remind the authorities of your rights when appropriate – see our entry about the right time to file a notice of dispute here.