An empirical rethinking of the hegemonic concept of foreign investment in the Global South

The hegemonic concept of foreign investment embedded in almost 3.300 international investment agreements (IIA) implies that capital-exporting States have imposed its own perspective of development, which means that foreign capital is detached from welfare of the host states. The arbitral decisions taken within the international investment law and the financial outcomes derived from those decisions, show that such system is mainly addressed to provide a extremely favourable protection for private property rights of foreign investors, especially, to those linked to multinational companies and wealthy individuals from developed nations. On this regard, in order to rethink new methods and understandings of the international investment law, the paper aims to discuss the empirical outcomes that the hegemonic concept of foreign investment included at the IIA have been unfolded at the Global South, and how it has impacted on the development at the domestic level.