Appreciating ICAO’s critical and growing need for voluntary contribution support from its Member States, over and above their assessed contributions as signatory States to the Chicago Convention, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) of the Republic of Korea formalized two new Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with the Organization. The new agreements were jointly signed by Korea’s Minister of MOLIT Mr. Won Hee-ryong and ICAO Secretary General Juan Carlos Salazar, during a special ceremony on the sidelines of ICAO’s ongoing 41st Assembly session.
The first of the two MOUs prescribes the participation of MOLIT in contributing to the new Transformational Fund of ICAO, which is aimed at supporting the Organization in increasing its overall efficiency and effectiveness, including through the envisioned digital transformation of all aspects of its work, activities and operations, as detailed in the ICAO 2023-2025 Business Plan.
The second MOU confirms the hosting support and related arrangements for ICAO’s 2nd Global Implementation Support Symposium (GISS), which will be held in Seoul from 29 May to 2 June 2023. ICAO implementation support activities cover the full range of its technical cooperation and assistance programmes for national capacity-building, and is seen as an increasingly key aspect of the Organization’s mission and role for the coming decade.
ICAO Secretary General Salazar warmly welcomed the generous new commitments and contributions on behalf of Korea and MOLIT, stressing their importance to the Secretariat’s ongoing work to redefine a new ICAO for post-pandemic air transport as the Organization works with States and industry to reconnect the world.
“ICAO needs to undertake some significant transformations to better serve its Member States, and to be a much more efficient standards maker and multilateral solutions provider in this incredible era of aviation innovation,” he underscored. “We’ve now defined the six distinct transformational outputs supporting this evolution in our 2023-2025 Business Plan, and these latest contributions from Korea to our digital transformation and implementation support activities will provide a key foundation for our long-term success.”