By Toby McIntosh
The adoption of virtual meeting technology to conduct meetings at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) does not mean sharing screens with the public.
Closed meetings remain standard operating procedure for the ICAO committees and work groups, including the high-profile COVID-19 Aviation Recovery Taskforce (CART).
A hint of a possible shift toward more open meetings came recently from ICAO’s communication officer, William Raillant-Clark. He said the Secretariat of ICOA “has encouraged” the ICAO Council “to consider permitting greater public access to its discussions while they are taking place via online platforms.” (See EYE article)
However, this encouragement does not appear to yet have translated into open meetings. In a subsequent message the ICAO spokesman stressed that it is the member countries who make the decisions.
Although ICAO’s rules say that committee meetings should be open unless the body decides to close them, the reality has long been the opposite.
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The use of virtual meeting technology at ICAO has come during a busy period in which many committees are meeting, including the new task force.
Three virtual closed meetings have been held in the past few weeks by the 24-person task force chaired by Philippe Bertoux, France’s delegate on the ICAO Council.
Bertoux posted a message on Twitter May 12 after CART’s third virtual meeting, along with a shot of his screen showing that there were 57 participants. Bertoux reported: “Provisional agreement on 10 key principles for a safe, secure and sustainable restart and recovery. Work progressing on all other fronts. Report expected end of May.”
After the second session, May 5, Bertoux tweeted: “3 drafting groups at work on (1) key principles for restart and recovery, (2) essential measures required esp. health-related, and (3) structure of the CART report. Great collective effort !”
The CART sessions are not viewable by the public, however. Bertoux did not respond to questions sent to the contact email at the French ICAO office. Raillant-Clark said he said he did not know if the committee had voted to close its meetings.
No Virtual Open Meetings Scheduled
May and June are busy months for other ICAO committees. The month of May is the designated “committee phase” that precedes the June meetings of the governing Council.
The committees and working group are holding virtual meetings, but no list of the sessions appears to exist on the ICAO website. None appear open for observation, judging by a review of the website and of ICAO’s online video offerings, the ICAO Youtube channel and ICAOTV. These include instructional videos and recordings of open forums, interviews and speeches.
A request for further detail from ICAO on the meetings and which ones are open has not been answered.
ICAO’s rules suggest a bias toward openness. A description of the rules from the spokesperson says:
According to the Rules of Procedure for Standing Committees of the Council, the Committee itself decides when a meeting or part thereof shall be closed. Otherwise, meetings of the Committee are open to the public (Rule 17, Doc 8146 refers). So in other words it is at the discretion of the group of sovereign States composing the CART committee to collectively agree on how they wish to conduct their discussions, and not the ICAO Secretariat.
ICAO is one of the most secretive UN agencies. (See 2019 EYE report.) Very few documents get released before or after meetings and the agency lacks a process for requesting documents.
At the triennial Assembly meeting of all ICAO members held in September, 2019, three out of five committee meetings were “livecast,” but not the committee that handles climate. (See EYE article.)
The Assembly in 2019 adopted a resolution directing the ICAO Council and the Secretary General to “take further concrete steps to increase transparency.” (See EYE article.)
It is unclear what has transpired since then, although the spokesman’s statement that Secretariat was encouraging the Council to permit greater public access could be a hint.
Many UN agencies are grappling with how to handle virtual meetings. (See EYE article.)
