Kategori Digilib
Water, National Sovereignty and Social Resistance: Bilateral Investment Treaties and the Struggles against Multinational Water Companies in Cochabamba and El Alto, Bolivia
Dr. Susan Spronk (susanspronk@yahoo.ca) & Dr. Carlos Crespo (crespoflores@yahoo.com)
The Law, Social Justice and Global Development Journal, University of Warwick, 2008
2008
Urban Water Supply Privatisation, Bilateral Investment Treaties, International Court for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, World Bank Group, Human Right to Water
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/lgd/2008_1/spronk_crespo/spronk.pdf
742 kali
Over the last 20 years, bilateral investment agreements (BITs) have become an important part of the
neoliberal ‘free trade’ agenda to open markets to foreign investment and protect the corporate ‘right’ to
profit over the human right to water. Drawing on two case studies of urban water privatisation in Bolivia,
this article argues that BITs act as conditioning frameworks that restrict the ability of governments to
meet the demands of citizens for rights such as access to water. Recently, however, Bolivian social
movements have launched successful resistance strategies and won important victories against neoliberal
globalisation: two private water contracts with multinational corporations have been cancelled. This
article analyzes the lessons learned from these two Bolivian cases for social movements elsewhere,
especially the importance of international solidarity in pressuring multinational corporations to drop
lawsuits.
See at: . http://www2.