...El Salvador is a country that faces a confluence of difficult legacies...Mining has proven to be particularly controversial...Water pollution in particular has been shown to be a problem with gold mining, and in a country that has such limited potable water supplies this aspect becomes even more critical...The current government...intends to pursue an alternative development model, aimed at meeting the basic needs of the people...As a result...[it] has declared a de facto moratorium on the granting of mining permits. In response...OceanaGold, have pursued legal action...This legal suit has the potential to set an international precedent that will determine whether a multinational corporation can, with legal impunity, impoverish a small and vulnerable country because it has not been allowed to proceed with a practice that, potentially, could be highly destructive to the country while providing relatively little benefit to any but the corporation...