ICSID (International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes) is an international mechanism which is specially created for the consideration of investment disputes within the framework of the ICSID Convention. On the basis of the Washington Convention of the year 1965, the International Center of settlement of Investment Disputes was founded. The noted center specializes in investment disputes and considers investment disputes arising between a contracting state and the physical and legal persons (investors) of another contracting state.

The jurisdiction of the Center spreads on those legal disputes directly connected with investments, which arise between a contracting state (or between any subdivision or agency of a contracting state, which the contracting state indicates to the Center) and a second contracting state and about the transfer of which to the Center the parties agreed in writing. If both parties expressed consent, neither of them can change the agreement unilaterally.

The existence of international mechanisms for the settlement of disputes between a foreign investor and a state is considered as one of the most important achievements of modern investment law. For the use during the consideration of an investment dispute by the procedures of conciliation and arbitration within the frameworks of the convention, the investor must, at this or that stage, express consent to the jurisdiction of the Center of ICSID (that is, become subjected to the jurisdiction of the Center). Theoretically, an agreement on the jurisdiction of ICSID is possible even after the dispute, however, the parties, as a rule, give preference to a preliminary agreement (pre-dispute consent), that is, to the preliminary settlement of the issue of jurisdiction by a contract or a corresponding provision. The first point of the 25th article of the convention establishes that the jurisdiction of the Center spreads on any legal dispute, which arises directly originating from an investment, and which exists between a participating state of the convention and a citizen of another participating state, on that condition, that the parties declared consent in writing, that the dispute be transferred to the Center.

By the 47th article of the Washington convention of the year 1965 [and] the 39th article of the arbitration rules of ICSID, the authority of the arbitration of ICSID is envisaged to give a recommendation to a party about the use of any measure of security.

The tribunal of ICSID on the case Tokios Tokeles v. Ukraine indicated, that according to the established practice of the tribunal of ICSID, the recommendation of a measure of security is legally mandatory, they have the effect of an order and the parties have a legal obligation to fulfill them.

According to the ICSID convention, an obligation is imposed on a member state to recognize the ICSID decision as mandatory and enforce the pecuniary obligations imposed by it in such a way, as if it were the final decision of its national court.