Towards Access to Remedial Mechanisms in International Arbitration for Third-Party Victims of Foreign Investment-Related Abuse in Nigeria

Abstract

For decades communities in Nigeria (third-parties) have suffered human rights violations due to the adverse impact of oil pollution caused by the operations of foreign oil multinationals. Although, there are remedial mechanisms provided by the Nigerian courts, foreign courts and international human rights courts, they have not always availed them of redress due to certain limitations. Consequently, many of the violations have gone unredressed meaning that there is a remedy gap. To address this problem, this thesis argued that creating remedial mechanisms in international arbitration will not only avail Nigerian third-parties of more redress options to choose from but will afford them the choice of a more efficient remedial mechanism. It, therefore, asked how international arbitration can be leveraged to improve access to remedial mechanisms for Nigerian third-parties. In answering this question, it analysed the limitations of the current remedial mechanisms, their enabling instruments and recent reform efforts using doctrinal analysis and selected case studies. Given its focus on arbitration, this thesis also analysed the asymmetry in the investor-State arbitration (ISA) clauses of Nigeria’s bilateral investment treaties (BITs) using positivist, post-colonial theory and neo-Marxist lenses. It found that the current remedial mechanisms are unreliable, and that Nigeria’s BITs do not support third-party claims. Deploying the New Haven approach, this thesis leveraged the Rwanda-UAE BIT (2017), Slovak-Iran BIT (2016), the Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration 2019 and the successive accords concluded to protect workers in the Bangladeshi textile industry, to propose the creation of international arbitration mechanisms for third-parties. Then, it rigorously evaluated the proposals to demonstrate their feasibility and concluded that international arbitration can, indeed, be leveraged to reduce the remedy gap for third-parties in Nigeria. This thesis’ findings and proposals will augment the corpus of literature on this subject and improve access to remedial mechanisms for Nigerian third-parties, where implemented.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Canterbury Christ Church University