ABSTRACT
The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) was established by the 1965 Washington Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of other States. The Convention was prepared under the auspices of the World Bank and it aims to provide a special forum for the settlement of investment disputes, in order to encourage the increase of foreign investment worldwide. In the Middle East, the 1965 Convention is a safeguard for increasing Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) by private foreign entities from the developed world to the MENA states. In 1978, ICSID created the ‘Additional Facility’ to cover cases which fall outside the ambit of the ICSID Convention, particularly where one of the parties is not from a contracting state. To date, hundreds of Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) in the Middle East have provided for arbitration under ICSID.1 The 1965 ICSID Convention, which came into force in October 1966, was executed in Washington, DC. The Washington Convention is also known as the ICSID Convention. Today, more than 144 States have both signed and ratified the ICSID Convention (Contracting States).
