The World Bank invited Associate Professor Mariana Hernández Crespo to serve as its expert guest at a meeting in Bolivia with attorney generals from Bolivia, Paraguay, and Ecuador. Hernández Crespo was given an opportunity to address attorney generals that have been feeling the brunt of investor-State disputes in Latin America and introduce them to her research proposals.
This was a key setting, given that attorney generals represent the governments of the host countries in investor-State arbitration proceedings. Some of the countries represented in the meeting were among those that have expressed the highest levels of dissatisfaction with the current system and, in particular, with the arbitration process.
Hernández Crespo argues that the best way to “defend” their countries is by expanding their role as attorneys from that of a litigator to that of a “problem solver.” In this way, they would need to broaden their skill set to include the broad range of conflict resolution processes, including facilitative processes. Moreover, she emphasized the need for a preliminary conflict assessment in order to determine the appropriate method of dispute resolution for each case.