ICSID Releases Fifth Working Paper on Rule Amendments

The ICSID Secretariat today released the fifth Working Paper on proposed amendments to the Centre's procedural rules for resolving international investment disputes.

Working Paper # 5: Proposals for Amendment of the ICSID Rules features the updated rules and regulations for ICSID Convention and ICSID Additional Facility arbitration and conciliation, as well as new rules for fact-finding and mediation in 'clean' and 'track-change' formats in ICSID's three official languages, English, French and Spanish.

The proposals endeavor to reflect the most recent comments of ICSID Member States and other stakeholders, while respecting the need for a timely and effective process, maintaining equal treatment of all parties to ICSID proceedings, and ensuring consistency with the ICSID Convention.

The project of amending the ICSID rules has evolved significantly since October 2016, resulting in the most comprehensive and transparent rule amendment process to date.

'Many important changes have been incorporated in the proposals, which overall reflect a modern approach to investor-State dispute settlement,' said Meg Kinnear, ICSID Secretary-General. 'It is vital now to move toward adoption and implementation of the current proposals so that all facility users benefit from the changes developed over the past years. The ICSID Secretariat is hopeful that States will be supportive of this version of the proposed amendments, and that we can move toward a vote, ideally by the end of 2021.'

Further information on the ICSID rule amendment process-including previous Working Papers and the input received on them-is available on the ICSID website at https://icsid.worldbank.org/resources/rules-amendments