• The Council of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) found Russia responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight (MH17) over eastern Ukraine on July 14, 2014 that killed all 298 people on board. 

• Russia has rejected the findings.

• Flight MH17 was heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over eastern Ukraine amid the armed conflict between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian military forces.

• All 283 passengers and 15 crew members were killed. They represented some 17 nationalities and included 196 Dutch citizens, 43 Malaysians and 38 Australian citizens or residents.

• In August 2014, the Netherlands established a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) together with Australia, Malaysia and Belgium, as well as Ukraine.

• The JIT determined that flight MH17 was shot down by a missile launched from a Buk TELAR installation that was transported from Russia to a farm field in eastern Ukraine in an area controlled by separatists.

• That same year, the Netherlands and Australia launched the case with ICAO.

• The council of the ICAO voted that Russia failed to uphold its obligations under international air law which requires that States “refrain from resorting to the use of weapons against civil aircraft in flight”.

International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)

• A specialised agency of the United Nations, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) was created to promote the safe and orderly development of international civil aviation throughout the world. It sets standards and regulations necessary for aviation safety, security and facilitation, efficiency, economic development of air transport as well as to improve the environmental performance of aviation. 

• The Convention on International Civil Aviation, drafted in 1944 by 54 nations, was established to promote cooperation and “create and preserve friendship and understanding among the nations and peoples of the world.” 

• Known more commonly today as the ‘Chicago Convention’, this landmark agreement established the core principles permitting international transport by air, and led to the creation of the specialised agency which has overseen it ever since.

• On April 4, 1947, upon sufficient ratifications to the Chicago Convention, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) was established. The first official ICAO Assembly was held in Montreal in May of that year.

• ICAO is funded and directed by 193 national governments to support their diplomacy and cooperation in air transport as signatory states to the Chicago Convention.

• The headquarters of ICAO is situated in Montreal.

• Its core function is to maintain an administrative and expert bureaucracy (the ICAO Secretariat) supporting these diplomatic interactions, and to research new air transport policy and standardisation innovations as directed and endorsed by governments through the ICAO Assembly, or by the ICAO Council which the assembly elects.

• ICAO is not an international aviation regulator. The stipulations ICAO standards contain never supersede the primacy of national regulatory requirements. It is always the local, national regulations which are enforced in, and by, sovereign states, and which must be legally adhered to by air operators making use of applicable airspace and airports.

• The Secretariat of the ICAO is headed by the Secretary General.

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