Water, National Sovereignty and Social Resistance: Bilateral Investment Treaties and the Struggles against Multinational Water Companies in Cochabamba and El Alto, Bolivia

Over the last 20 years, bilateral investment agreements (BITs) have become an important part of the
neoliberal ‘free trade’ agenda to open markets to foreign investment and protect the corporate ‘right’ to
profit over the human right to water. Drawing on two case studies of urban water privatisation in Bolivia,
this article argues that BITs act as conditioning frameworks that restrict the ability of governments to
meet the demands of citizens for rights such as access to water. Recently, however, Bolivian social
movements have launched successful resistance strategies and won important victories against neoliberal
globalisation: two private water contracts with multinational corporations have been cancelled. This
article analyzes the lessons learned from these two Bolivian cases for social movements elsewhere,
especially the importance of international solidarity in pressuring multinational corporations to drop
lawsuits.

See at: . http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/lgd/2008_1/spronk_crespo/spronk.pdf

Post Date : 29 Oktober 2008