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.Profiting from Injustice:..the boom in investment arbitration.For several years TNI has focused on ‘investmentprotection’ regimes that give corporations the right tosue states for actions that hit their profits, even wherethe measures are taken to defend public interests inpoor countries. In 2012, TNI and the Corporate EuropeObservatory co-published Profiting from Injustice, alandmark report exposing the small clique of internationallaw firms, arbitrators and financial speculators fuellinga boom in the investment arbitration industry. Profitingfrom Injustice broke new ground in challenging theidea that arbitrators and law firms are simply neutralfunctionaries of the regimes, showing that they are, in fact,highly active players. Law firms seek every opportunity tobring cases against governments and the whole industryhas a vested interest in defending the status quo. Thereport accuses law firms of ‘ambulance chasing’ by activelysoliciting lawsuits against governments in crisis, such asthat of Greece.The report has been successful in putting the issue ofinvestment arbitration on the agenda of civil society andsocial movements, especially in challenging the notion ofits ‘neutrality’. Significantly, it has had a much wider impact,attracting the attention of the media and policymakers(particularly in Latin America) as well as investors and lawfirms themselves. A leading arbitration industry journalKluwer Arbitration, for example, ran a guest blog post by TNI.Some 15,900 people accessed the publications and videosin 2012, and an estimated further 114,000 were reachedthrough Twitter.The report also profiled prominent cases such as thecigarette company Philip Morris suing the governments ofAustralia and Uruguay under bilateral investment treatiesover laws requiring large health warning labels on cigarettepackets. TNI has been involved in supporting campaigns tochallenge Philip Morris in Uruguay together with REDES,the local Friends of the Earth chapter. These cases andmore were reproduced in the more popular educationalpamphlet Dangerous Weapons, co-published by TNI, andin a short animated video, ‘The dark side of investmentagreements’, which you can watch at bit.ly/tnidarkside.The longer-term campaign goal is for governments to beginto remove arbitration clauses from their trade treaties.Some governments, such as those of Australia, Bolivia,Ecuador and South Africa have started to move in thisCorporate Power tni Annual Report 2012 23