A provisional measure of protection is the term that the International Court of Justice

International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands...

 (ICJ, World Court) uses to describe a procedure "roughly equivalent" to an interim order

Interim order

The term interim order refers to an order passed by a court during the pendency of the litigation. It is generally passed by the Court to ensure Status quo. The rationale for such orders to be passed by the Courts lie are best explained by Latin legal maxim "Actus curiae neminem gravabit" which...

 (which can be either a temporary restraining order

Restraining order

A restraining order or order of protection is a form of legal injunction that requires a party to do, or to refrain from doing, certain acts. A party that refuses to comply with an order faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...

 or a temporary directive order) in national legal systems. The carrying out of the procedure is termed indicating the provisional measure of protection. Requests for the indication of provisional measures of protection take priority over all other cases before the ICJ due to their urgency.

History

As of 1989, the ICJ had dealt with twelve "requests for the indication of provisional measures of protection". Some of the parties involved include Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

, the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

, Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso – also known by its short-form name Burkina – is a landlocked country in west Africa. It is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Côte d'Ivoire to the southwest.Its size is with an estimated...

 and Mali

Mali

Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...

. On August 13, 2008, during the 2008 South Ossetia War

2008 South Ossetia war

The 2008 South Ossetia War or Russo-Georgian War was an armed conflict in August 2008 between Georgia on one side, and Russia and separatist governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the other....

, Georgia

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

submitted a request for the indication of provisional measures of protection. This request was approved with a vote of 8 to 7.