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Two tiers and double standards: foreign investors and the local community of La Guajira, Colombia

ABSTRACT Under international investment law (IIL), multinational companies enjoy a broad protection of property and investment. They can sue through investment arbitration and claim compensation for any act of the host state that presumably affects their interests. In contrast, local communities that live around large-scale mining sites are often adversely affected by multinational companies and IIL itself. They are protected by domestic law and human rights frameworks, but their claims are limited in scope, reparations and effectiveness. This denotes the existence of two tiers and double standards system, with the interests of private foreign actors and their capital placed above the needs of local communities. In this article, I utilize a large-scale coal mining project in Colombia, the Cerrejón project, as a case study to illustrate the multiple ways in which IIL is implicated in the relations between the State, the foreign investor and the local community.