Originally from Between East and West: Essays in Honour of Ulf Franke

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I. INTRODUCTION

The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) is a public international organization, one of four affiliated with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). The other affiliated organizations are the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the International Development Association (IDA), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). The constituent treaty of ICSID, which was formulated by the Executive Directors of the IBRD, is the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States (the ICSID Convention). The States parties to it now number 144. They are called Contracting States in the Convention. In accordance with Article 3 of the Convention, ICSID has an Administrative Council and a Secretariat. The Council comprises one representative of each Contracting State; its functions include approving the regulations, rules, and annual reports and budgets of ICSID. The President of the IBRD is ex officio Chairman of the Council. The Secretariat, consisting of a Secretary-General, Deputy Secretary-General, and staff, carries out the day-to-day work of ICSID. This includes administering the system created by the Convention for the conciliation and arbitration of investment disputes between Contracting States and nationals of other Contracting States. Article 25(1) of the Convention elaborates, in terms that refer to the “jurisdiction of the Centre,” on the scope of this system. According to Article 25(1), the jurisdiction extends to “any legal dispute arising directly out of an investment, between a Contracting State (or any constituent subdivision or agency of a Contracting State designated to the Centre by that State) and a national of another Contracting State, which the parties to the dispute consent in writing to submit to the Centre.”