The ICSID has not yet ruled on the jurisdiction objection in the Pacific Rim-El Salvador case.
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Two of Argentina's leftist counterparts, Bolivia and Ecuador, have already withdrawn from ICSID entirely.
More specifically, the World Bank investment court, called the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
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The right of the ICSID to decide issues between countries and companies has also been called into question.
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Multinationals had written off Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela long before they left ICSID.
Arbitration tribunals at the ICSID have historically been closed, with labor and environmental activists often criticizing this lack of transparency.
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Its statements to the ICSID also accuse the El Salvadoran government of not telling the company where its EIA was deficient.
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But many ICSID claims involve investment treaties, which grant governments exceptions for broad interests such as public health or the environment.
Recently, the ICSID and the proceedings it oversees have come under fire.
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El Salvador, as a signatory to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, has already agreed to have these sorts of disputes handled by the ICSID.
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The practice gained popularity and participants via free trade agreements and bi-lateral investment treaties in which developed countries would require developing countries to agree to have disputes handled by the ICSID.
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They say that ICSID was set up to enable firms to avoid local courts, and that their awards are binding even without Argentine judicial approval a position that ICSID's arbitrators have backed.
Argentina sees ICSID as too business-friendly, with some justification.
They are the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
However in May, 2009 an international arbitration tribunal under the auspices of the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes ("ICSID") unanimously ordered that the government of Ecuador and Petroecuador halt seizures of crude oil against Perenco.
The ICSID has yet to rule on this jurisdictional issue, but when lawyers for the Salvadoran government pushed previously to have the case dismissed on the grounds that Pacific Rim has no right to an exploitation permit, the ICSID ruled in favor of Pacific Rim.
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