Following the call from stakeholders at the High-level IIA Conference 2024, UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is in the process of developing Guiding Principles for IIA Reform, to facilitate IIA reform for sustainable development. The principles build on UNCTAD’s leading role as the convening forum on IIA reform, core policy guidance developed since 2012, including the Principles for Investment Policymaking (Investment Policy Framework for Sustainable Development 2015), and experience collected from over a decade of reform action.
As part of UNCTAD’s Multi-stakeholder Platform on IIA Reform, about 60 participants from governments, international organizations, civil society, academia and the private sector convened online on 30 September 2025 to discuss guiding principles for IIA reform.
The Multi-stakeholder Platform was launched at the UNCTAD High-level IIA Conference in 2023 as an inclusive forum for informal expert-level deliberations on ways to fast-track the reform of IIAs.
The third meeting of UNCTAD’s Multi-stakeholder Platform on IIA Reform focused on three questions:
1) How can the proposed principles be directly relevant to countries IIA reform efforts?
2) What are best practices in reforming IIAs and engaging with other countries?
3) What content should be covered by the principles?
The proposed guiding principles being prepared by UNCTAD aim to provide an overarching framework that guides policymakers and inspires reform action to embed sustainable development at the core of the international investment regime.
The development of the guiding principles will be shaped based on inputs from the expert participants of the Platform. The draft principles will also form the basis for discussion at the next UNCTAD High-level IIA Conference.
With the increase in IIA reform activity around the world in recent years, countries’ experiences offer valuable insights on the effectiveness of different actions. The increasing activity has also translated into novel challenges, such as managing parallel approaches across countries and regions. By incorporating lessons from the past decade of reform action, the guiding principles will address practical aspects of IIA reform. This will include procedural and substantive elements around the overarching goal of embedding sustainable development at the core of the international investment regime. The principles will support countries in developing an IIA reform strategy focused on old-generation IIAs as well as forward-looking action points when designing, negotiating and operationalizing reformed IIAs.
A recent IIA Issues Note distilled insights on inhibitors and accelerators of IIA reform from the informal deliberations of the IIA Reform Platform that took place in 2024.