On 27 June 2024, the tribunal within the funding dispute Seda v Colombia delivered a long-awaited award. The choice, hailed by Colombia as ‘historic’, represents the primary publicly obtainable award the place an funding tribunal accepted the ‘self-judging’ character of a provision inside an funding settlement. Moreover, it’s the first public award to dismiss a whole declare primarily based on the invocation of a safety exception (although see the partially profitable invocation in Devas v India and the unpublished Tenoch v India).
After briefly outlining the information, this submit analyses the tribunal’s detailed engagement with the difficulty of self-judgment. It argues {that a} lasting significance of the award will lie in the truth that the tribunal performed any overview in any respect, regardless of the availability being framed as what I describe as a ‘strengthened self-judgment’ clause.
