Young ICSID Profiles – Special Interview with Gonzalo Flores

Young ICSID is delighted to present the latest edition of its interview series. Each issue delves into practical aspects of career development and skill enhancement, offering perspectives in the field of international investment law and dispute resolution.

In this special installment, we are excited to feature insights from Gonzalo Flores, who joined ICSID in 1998 and after decades of service will retire from his role as Deputy Secretary-General on October 31, 2025.

Tell us about your journey to working at ICSID.

So let me tell you about my journey here. As many others, and unlike you and the younger people at ICSID, I arrived at ICSID only by chance. I was doing my LL.M. at Cornell, and I was looking for a job in London, where my wife was admitted for a PhD; she's the smart one in the family. I had a friend who was working in a small organization of the World Bank, and we had common friends in London. So I wrote to him asking for some addresses and he wrote back and said, “Hey, we may have openings in our organization. Why don't you send me your CV?” That's how it started. I was hired as a short-term consultant for six months, and apparently, I wasn't that bad. I was interviewed by the whole ICSID at the time, the four lawyers interviewed me, and after six months they decided to keep me. 
Funny anecdote: halfway through my six months, Antonio Parra, the then Deputy Secretary-General, tells me, “I'm going to—we're going to appoint you as the Secretary of the Tribunal on Maffezini [Emilio Agustín Maffezini v. The Kingdom of Spain].” First thing I thought was: “Well, I know nothing, why are they appointing me as the Secretary of the Tribunal?” But then my smart part of the brain said, “Well, this case is not going to last three months, so I'm going to have to stay, so this is good news.” And I always thought that they gave me Maffezini because it was a very small case. And that's a lesson that I will talk about later, because there are no small cases; it became a staple of international investment arbitration. After that, I continued my journey working with the best people in the world here. I worked with five different Secretary-Generals, six different Presidents of the World Bank, and slowly moved from consultant to junior counsel, counsel, senior counsel, chief counsel to end as Deputy Secretary-General of ICSID—a role that I never thought I would play, but I have enjoyed so much playing in the last ten years. So that's basically the journey to where I am now.

You have mentored so many at ICSID. Who were the mentors that guided you in the early stages of your career?

That's a very good question and not an easy one to answer. I always wanted to have a mentor when I was in law school, when I played sports, when I—all my life, I wanted to have mentors. The problem is that I was always the responsible one, whom you’d put in charge of things, but you don't invite for dinner. So by 40 I decided, “OK, I'm not going to have a mentor,” a real mentor, meaning somebody who takes you under his or her wing. But I had so many friends on the way, and I worked with so many wonderful people. 
I mean, if I go back to my beginnings at ICSID, I’d have to name people like Antonio Parra, who would be the first Deputy Secretary-General of ICSID. Alejandro Escobar, who's a partner at a big firm in London, practicing international arbitration. Margrete Stevens, who retired recently. They were all very important in my early development as an ICSID lawyer.
But also, the advantage that you have when you work at ICSID is that you work with the best people in the world. And by this, I mean you work with the best people in the world here. Very smart and well-prepared investment law experts. You work with the best lawyers in the world, from law firms from all over, all different regions. And, you have the opportunity to work with the best arbitrators. I mean, the opportunity to sit down and work with the late James Crawford, Piero Bernardini from Italy, Emmanuel Gaillard, Pedro Nikken from Venezuela, Rodrigo Oreamuno from Costa Rica. I keep naming people, many of them retired, Prosper Weil. It's an absolute privilege to work here.
So, who's my mentor? I have been mentored by everybody around me and by my colleagues here. Now, I have been also lucky to be called a mentor, as you said, by many. If there's any legacy that I leave here, I think I have tried to help, as much as I could, younger lawyers.

What is your advice for young practitioners who are looking to find a mentor? How do they build and maintain that bond?

First of all, before doing international investment arbitration, be a good lawyer. That's aviation law, that's litigation, that's securities; it can be anything. We are living in a world where people say, “I want to be an arbitrator when I turn 21.” It didn't work that way when I started. In fact, when I started, when we were looking for appointments, we were looking for good judges. And these judges would come from the world of human rights, from international courts, would come from commercial arbitration practices, in commercial venues like London, Paris. You were not looking for an expert in international investment law. So, the first advice: be a good lawyer.
Second advice: don't look for a mentor! You will find one, or you will not; and you will survive. I never got one and I'm OK. 
The relationships that you build, I have a couple of comments on that. If you are decent, if you're honest and you're a hard worker, you will develop an important relationship. One thing that I learned through these 30 years, which I think is very interesting, is that you develop a very strong bond with the President of a Tribunal when it's their first case. It doesn't matter how good they are, how seasoned they are in other fields, if it's their first ICSID case, they're going to rely on you and you will develop a friendship that lasts for a very, very long time.
Also, if you work hard and you're decent and you focus on integrity and your role, Tribunals will start trusting you more and you will develop that relationship. I am very lucky to have many, many friends. I know almost everybody in the investment arbitration world. And I was never chasing the spotlight. I was just trying to do the right thing and work hard. That's all it is.

In your view, what are some of the secrets to being an excellent Secretary of the Tribunal or ad hoc Committee today?

I think that, in ICSID, to be a good Secretary of the Tribunal, the first tip is to understand what is the role of ICSID; what is it that we do. We are an international organization that seeks to help parties to peacefully resolve the disputes to promote development. You need to understand that. Second, you need to understand who do you work for. You don't work for the Tribunal, you don't work for the parties, you don't work for me, as the Deputy Secretary-General, or the Secretary-General. You work for the organization, and your duty is to protect the goals and what the organization stands for. And then do your work, be respectful, be attentive to the details, read the papers. Always remember that the decision-makers are the Tribunal members that were elected by the parties, not by you. You have to earn their trust. My experience with Tribunals is that they're very, very open and willing and ready to work with younger people. Most of them.

What is the most important lesson you have learned from the many arbitration cases you have worked on at ICSID?

There are two lessons that I think are interesting, and one came from my first answer—there are no small cases. You don't know how long a case is going to live. Maffezini was a small case in those days. Today, it would be a very small case, and yet it became a very important case because of the legal questions that were posed to the Tribunal.
I've seen in the past also big cases that come with a big noise and political impact, and everybody's concerned about those cases, and suddenly the case, in a couple of months, is settled. You never know if a case is going to have a big impact on the development of international investment law. You just treat every case the same.
The other thing that I have learned, and I have seen younger lawyers say, “Oh no, I don't want another case with such and such company or country.” And I tell them it’s not about one case. What is fascinating about international investment law and the work of ICSID is to look at the cases from 30,000 feet above and see the systemic moves—what are the trends, how it moves, especially in crisis cases. I'm thinking about the Argentinian crisis of 2001, or—not to call them crisis cases, but systemic problems like the renewable energy cases in Europe, cases started against Venezuela starting in the year 2000. All of those cases, if you look at them from a holistic perspective, it's fascinating how international investment law develops.

You have been the Deputy Secretary General (DSG) of ICSID for almost a decade. Tell us about this role.

It's a complex, multifaceted question because there's the role of the DSG as I see it, and there's the role of Gonzalo Flores as the DSG. Because again, I have been here three decades. So that means that I do many, many things that are not necessarily associated with my role as DSG, such as mentoring people, answering questions. Has anybody seen this? Yeah, I have seen it. Have we had this experience before? Yes, I have been there. I have seen it.
But my straight answer to your question, it's a technical one. I think it's an important one. The Deputy Secretary-General's role is to be ready to stand in for the Secretary-General, when the Secretary-General is not available, or if for any reason cannot act. The Deputy Secretary-General of ICSID performs a lot of duties; duties that are administrative, duties that are managerial, related to the World Bank. But the key aspect of being a Deputy Secretary-General is that if the Secretary-General is not here for any reason, the Deputy Secretary-General should be ready to stand in and make decisions under the ICSID Convention. I think that's the key part.

During your tenure as Deputy Secretary-General, what are the main developments at ICSID that you are especially proud of?

I am very proud of the development of international investment law under ICSID through the past 30 years, independent of my role as Deputy Secretary-General. I'm a big believer, and this may sound corny, that your role as leader is to facilitate the work of the people that work with you. It's not for them to make you look better, it's for you to help them do their job better. And I've always had this view. You do your work right, ICSID shines; you make a mistake, ICSID is affected. So we all work as a team.
But for me, the key development that I have seen, and it doesn't have to do with being a Deputy [Secretary-General], it has to do with being an ICSID lawyer or an ICSID staff, is that we have been able to play an essential role in the peaceful settlement of international investment disputes. We receive very complex, politically charged, sensitive cases here. And the fact that they are resolved under a set of rules, under the rule of law here, that is what we do. That's the most important thing. That's what makes me proud.

How can young practitioners prepare for the future of investor-State dispute settlement?

As I said before, young practitioners should prepare for being good lawyers and, again, caring about the goals and the role of their organization. Many young lawyers come and say to me, “It has always been my dream to do international investment arbitration”. And my answer is, “It was always my dream to play saxophone with John Coltrane and Dexter Gordon”. That's a dream. This is a job. You have to do it well and you have to prepare. But, be a good lawyer. There are many areas of law that are fascinating. Of course, investment arbitration has a certain glamour and charm, but it's mostly the intellectual challenge that makes it so fascinating. And the positive impact of the role that we play. So, do it because you want to do something good. Do it because you want to be part of this, not because it sounds cool to have hearings in Paris. Because it's a lot of work to have a hearing in Paris.

What has been your motto in life?

It's a funny question because you don't go through life thinking of mottos. But if there are things that have driven me in the past few years—and I learned this from my first boss as a lawyer—is always do the right thing, no matter how much it hurts. Always, always do the right thing. At the end of the day, it pays.
And always treat people nicely. When I was younger, I was very arrogant, and I thought being intelligent was the most valuable thing. And then you come to this world where everybody's intelligent and everybody is smart, and international arbitration has so many smart people, and the only thing that's valuable is being kind. I mean, be kind to everybody.
And as I have told you, family comes first.
That’s basically it.