This IIA Issues Note presents the latest trends and evolution of international investment treaty reform, drawing on new data from its online IIA Content Mapping database and its new IIA Facilitation Mapping database.

Highlights:

• UNCTAD’s analysis of international investment agreements (IIAs) concluded between 2010 and 2024 identifies two main phases of reform. The first phase focused on recalibrating traditional investor protection standards and dispute settlement mechanisms. From 2015 onward, a second phase emerged, characterized by the growing inclusion of investment cooperation and facilitation provisions.

• New-generation IIAs increasingly emphasize cooperation and facilitation, continue to refine protection standards, and show a gradual expansion of liberalization commitments–though these require carefully designed flexibilities.

• Investor–State arbitration appears less frequently in new IIAs. Sustainable development provisions are becoming more prominent, albeit they are not yet fully mainstreamed across the regime.

• Despite these advances, new treaties coexist with a large stock of older, unreformed agreements that continue to dominate the investment regime and constrain regulatory space in critical policy areas.