The Seventh Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers, held in Istanbul in May 1976, proposed the establishment of an Islamic Chamber of Commerce, and its Constitution was adopted at the Second Conference of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, held in Karachi in December 1978. At the Islamic Chamber’s 28th General Assembly Meeting, held on April 11, 2012, in Istanbul, Türkiye, the name was altered to the Islamic Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture (ICCIA). The Islamic Chamber is an affiliate of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation that represents the private sectors of its 57 member states. It seeks to strengthen the collaboration among the national chambers, unions, and chambers of commerce and industry associations in the Member States of OIC.
The idea of establishing an arbitration centre within the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation dates back to 2016, when H.E. Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of the Republic of Türkiye, expressed, at the margins of the 13th Islamic Summit of the Heads of State (Istanbul, April 2016), the willingness of Türkiye, which is a founding OIC Member State, to host the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Arbitration Centre (OIC-AC).
On 27 November 2019, the Republic of Türkiye and the ICCIA signed the “Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Türkiye and the Islamic Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture on the Establishment of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Arbitration Centre in Türkiye” (the “Host Country Agreement”) in reference to the “Statute of OIC Arbitration Centre” (“Statute”). The Host Country Agreement was ratified by the President of the Republic of Türkiye on 25 January 2020 (Official Gazette No. 31019).
The OIC-AC has been established as per its Statute and the Host Country Agreement. The establishment of the Centre is the outcome of the resolutions in the 32nd, 33rd and 34th sessions of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation of the OIC (COMCEC), the 43rd, 44th and 45th sessions of the Council of Foreign Ministers, and the 27th Board of Directors meeting of the ICCIA.
The OIC-AC has been established to assist the parties, i.e., natural, and legal persons from the Member States of the OIC and Non-OIC States, to settle commercial and investment disputes through arbitration and other methods of alternative dispute resolution (ADR).