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The International Civil Aviation Organization

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1. Introduction A conference was initiated by the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, in which all the allied powers as well as some neutral governments convened at Chicago to discuss the future of civil aviation. The expectations from this conference, which came to be known as the Chicago Convention, were high even though the timing of the convention wasn’t perfect. The Chicago Convention proposed the formation of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which later became a part of the UN in 1947. The ICAO contains universal rules covering airspace sovereignty, aircraft registration and airworthiness, and global Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) for technical and safety harmonization records of the national …show more content…

Fifty-four countries attended the Chicago conference and although it did not quite achieve all of its goals, it did provide the groundwork for the founding of the ICAO in 1947. The Soviet Union was invited to the conference but did not attend. Many of the countries which the Allies were at war – Germany, Japan, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy and Finland – were not invited and were not represented but it was the absence of the USSR which was mainly felt as the USSR represented the largest land territory of the world and were expected to play an important role in after-war arrangements. This negative attitude of the USSR was perhaps a sign of the “cold-war” mistrust and isolation and that the secretive USSR was not ready to open its air space to international cooperation. The official reason given for the non-participation though was that among the nations taking part in the conference, there were some countries like Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal which for a number of years have carried on a hostile policy towards the Soviet Union. 3. Outcomes of the Convention The atmosphere of the conference was one of uncertainty and some anxiety, which was felt by all delegations towards the attempts of the US to impose its

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