In Latin America, concessions of public works have become an important mechanism to attract private investment and management of public infrastructure. A predominant part of the concessions is undertaken by foreign investors, who have better access to credit. In most of Latin American countries, all or part of the concessions-related disputes may be subject to arbitration (Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, etc). Sometimes, the disputes are deemed domestic, while sometimes they are submitted to international arbitral tribunals under various commercial arbitration rules. Other times, disputes arise under international treaties of investment protection, the concessions are considered investments and therefore offered international protection. Thus, there is a possibility of a parallelism between domestic and international arbitration in some cases, as well as between contract claims versus treaty claims in other cases. The ITA ALARB Americas Workshop aims to analyze the schemes followed by different Latin American countries, as well as to establish the possible coherence, clashes, and challenges that follow from the coexistence of the different concessions-related disputes under national laws and international law.
