ICAO Council adopts new declaration on improving gender representation

On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2021 on 8 March 2021, the 36 State International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) governing Council announced that it would be adopting concrete commitments in a new Declaration on Improving Gender Representation in ICAO’s Governing and Technical Bodies.

The new commitments include that all future ICAO Council committees, working groups, panels and other governance or technical bodies, as well as their Chair Groups – where applicable – and the Council’s own Vice-President cohort must be comprised of both men and women. 

Other commitments included:

• Protecting ICAO policies and standards from gender discriminatory language
• Promoting gender neutral language for its own communications
• Working to increase the number of women having access to Council level responsibilities.

The new Declaration also noted that International Women’s Day 2021 would mark the start of new Council advocacy efforts at the global, regional and national levels, and called on all of ICAO’s 193 Member States to systematically promote the role of women in aviation, and to give due regard and equal opportunity to the nomination of qualified female candidates when nominating representatives and other experts and officials to ICAO bodies and groups.

The ICAO Council’s President, Salvatore Sciacchitano, welcomed the new Declaration, the adoption of which was part of a series of recommendations from a special gender group that the Council had established during the tenth meeting of its 221st Session in November 2020.

“Reducing gender equality gaps can only be addressed when men and women work hand-in-hand to drive the needed changes together,” he highlighted, “and I’m grateful for the Council’s new and very strong commitments on gender equality which have been adopted here today. The pandemic has made it clear how diverse leadership benefits everyone, and how women and men can collectively and more effectively solve the urgent challenges of our time through more equally shared responsibilities.”