The Claimant, Methanex Corporation (“Methanex“), initiated this arbitration against the Respondent, the United States of America (the “USA“), on 3rd December 1999 under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA“), as a Canadian investor. As formulated in its Original Statement of Claim of 3rd December 1999, Methanex claimed compensation from the USA in the amount of approximately US$ 970 million (together with interest and costs), resulting from losses caused by the State of California's ban on the sale and use of the gasoline additive known as ‘ ‘MTBE'’ (methyl tertiary-butyl ether) which was then intended to become legally effective on 31st December 2002. MTBE is a synthetic, volatile, colourless and organic ether, with a turpentine-like taste and odour. Methanex was (and remains) the world's largest producer of methanol, a feedstock for MTBE. It has never produced or sold MTBE.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted the Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) (the Domestic Workers Convention or Convention), as supplemented by an accompanying non-binding Recommendation (No. 201), on June 16, 2011. Both instruments were immediately hailed as historic. Two years later, on September 5, 2013, the Domestic Workers Convention entered into force, thus bringing the fifty-three to 100 million predominantly women workers—many of whom are migrants—squarely within the corpus of international labor law, with due attention paid to the specificity of their human rights claims.

On September 19, 2016, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a set of commitments to enhance the protection of refugees and migrants, known as the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. In the Declaration, all 193 member states of the United Nations reaffirmed the importance of the international protection regime and committed to strengthening and enhancing mechanisms to protect people on the move. They also agreed to work toward the adoption of a global compact on refugees and a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration. These two compacts were drafted through separate processes over eighteen months in 2017–18 and formally adopted by the General Assembly in December 2018. One hundred and fifty-two states voted in favor of the adoption of the Migration Compact, while twelve countries abstained from the vote (Algeria, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Chile, Italy, Latvia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Romania, Singapore, and Switzerland), and five countries voted against (Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Poland, and the United States).