By Toby McIntosh
(Follow EYE @tobyjmcintosh)
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Assembly has adopted a resolution directing the ICAO Council and the Secretary General to “take further concrete steps to increase transparency.”
The language closely tracks the wording of a proposal from the United States, but does no define specific transparency reforms.
In a related development, the US has criticized ICAO for slow implementation of whistleblower protections, a charge ICAO rejects. China and African countries pushed back against a stronger whistleblower policy during the Assembly meeting. The US has threatened to withhold its $75 million in dues, one-quarter of ICAO’s budget, according to a Reuters report. A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration had no immediate comment. The dispute has its roots in ICAO’s handling of a 2016 hack of ICAO’s computer system. See articles in Foreign Policy and Reuters.
Transparency Resolution Contains No Specific Mandate
The Assembly resolution approved Oct. 3 does not prescribe any specific pro-transparency actions for ICAO.
The Council, the 36-member body that makes ICAO decisions during the three-year intervals between Assembly meetings, will be responsible for carrying out the resolution. The Council offered its own resolution on ICAO “efficiency and effectiveness” that made no mention of expanded transparency.
By contrast, the US Aug. 23 Working Paper on the innovation called for expanding access to documents. No documents are publicly available before ICAO Council meetings or committee meetings, and virtually none are released afterwards. And their meetings are closed.
The US Working Paper stated:
- Transparency for Inclusiveness and Better Decision Making: ICAO should expand access to ICAO information, meeting documents, resolutions, decisions, minutes, reports, documents, and publications for Member States, stakeholders, and the public through increased use of ICAO’s public web site. The Council and Secretary General should ensure that the decisions and minutes of the Council are accurate reflections of statements made at Council and other meetings, and that transcripts of the Council meetings are available to Council members at their request. ICAO should consider the possibility of webcasting Council and certain other high-level meetings, as is the practice at the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council and other UN specialized agencies. Security-related and industrial proprietary information shared with ICAO must continue to be protected.
However, the language of the approved resolution is more general. It is based on the US proposal, which said ICAO should “take concrete steps to increase transparency.” At some point in the process, the complimentary word “further” was added to modify “concrete steps.”
ICAO is one of the least transparent UN bodies, although the Assembly meetings, held every three years, are uncharacteristically open, with documents released in advance. (See EYE story). The Assembly sessions and some of the committee meetings that precede it are live-streamed. One exception was the Executive Committee, which acted on the innovation resolution and also worked on climate change matters. (See Eye article.)
Normally, however, for the meetings of the governing Council and standing committees, ICAO has restrictive policies on access to documents and lacks a freedom of information policy. (See Eye report.)
