The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID or the Centre) is a public international organization created under a treaty, the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes Between States and Nationals of Other States (the ICSID Convention or the Convention). The Convention was formulated by the Executive Directors of the World Bank and submitted by them on March 18, 1965 to member States of the Bank for consideration with a view to signature and ratification. The Convention, entered into force on October 14, 1966.
In accordance with the provisions of the Convention, ICSID provides facilities for the conciliation and arbitration of investment disputes between Contracting States and nationals of other Contracting States. The Centre’s objective in making such facilities available is to promote an atmosphere of mutual confidence between States and foreign investors conducive to increasing the flow of private international investment.
ICSID does not itself engage in such conciliation or arbitration. This is the task of conciliators and arbitrators appointed by the parties or as otherwise provided for in the Convention. The Centre assists in the initiation and conduct of conciliation and arbitration proceedings, performing a range of administrative functions in this respect.
Recourse to conciliation and arbitration under the ICSID Convention is entirely voluntary. No Contracting State or national of such a State is obliged to resort to such conciliation or arbitration without having consented to do so. However, once the parties have consented, they are bound to carry out their undertaking and, in the case of arbitration, to abide by the award. Moreover, all Contracting States, whether or not parties to the dispute, are required to recognize awards rendered pursuant to the Convention as binding and to enforce the pecuniary obligations imposed thereby. Such awards are not subject to any appeal or to any other remedy except those which, like the remedy of annulment, are provided for in the Convention itself.
Besides providing facilities for conciliation and arbitration under the ICSID Convention, the Centre has since 1978 had an Additional Facility allowing it to administer certain proceedings between States and nationals of other States which fall outside the scope of the Convention, notably conciliation and arbitration proceedings where one of the parties is not a Contracting State or a national of such a State.
Until the mid-1980s, jurisdiction in all of the cases brought to ICSID was founded upon consents recorded in an investment contract or similar instrument. Since then, an increasing number of cases have been founded on consents to ICSID arbitration, put in place by investment laws and treaties. With the influx of cases based on general consents of the States in the laws and treaties, only a minority of the proceedings before the Centre today concern disputes exclusively over the performance of investment contracts concluded by the State. The cases now more typically concern claims over such events as civil strife in the State, alleged expropriation or denials of justice by it, and actions of its political subdivisions.
[ http://www.worldbank.org/icsid/cases/cases.htm ]
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