The ICAO Council adopts standards and recommended practices concerning air navigation, its infrastructure, flight inspection, prevention of unlawful interference, and facilitation of border-crossing procedures for international civil aviation.

ICAO defines the protocols for air accident investigation that are followed by transport safety authorities in countries signatory to the Convention on International Civil Aviation.

International Standards and Recommended Practices are developed under the direction of the ANC through the formal process of ICAO Panels.

Once approved by the commission, standards are sent to the council, the political body of ICAO, for consultation and coordination with the member states before final adoption.

Following this, at the Paris Convention of 1919, a forerunner to ICAO named ICAN was established, the International Commission for Air Navigation.

The 26th country ratified the convention on 5 March 1947 and, consequently, PICAO was disestablished on 4 April 1947 and replaced by ICAO, which began operations the same day.

[citation needed] In October 1947, ICAO became an agency of the United Nations under its Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

Qatar promised to construct a massive new headquarters for ICAO and to cover all moving expenses, stating that Montreal "was too far from Europe and Asia", "had cold winters", was hard to attend due to the Canadian government's slow issuance of visas, and that the taxes imposed on ICAO by Canada were too high.

[10] According to The Globe and Mail, Qatar's invitation was at least partly motivated by the pro-Israel foreign policy of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Many of the tweets were related to the COVID-19 pandemic and Taiwan's exclusion from ICAO safety and health bulletins due to pressure from China.

In response, ICAO issued a tweet stating that publishers of "irrelevant, compromising and offensive material" would be "precluded".

[19][20] The United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs harshly criticized ICAO's perceived failure to uphold principles of fairness, inclusion, and transparency by silencing non-disruptive opposing voices.

In 2013, Taiwan was for the first time invited to attend the ICAO Assembly, at its 38th session, as a guest under the name of "Chinese Taipei".

Additionally, several other representatives from ICAO States and up to eight members from the civil aviation industry may be invited to take part in ANC meetings as observers.

[39] Machine-readable passports have an area where some of the information otherwise written in textual form is also written as strings of alphanumeric characters, printed in a manner suitable for optical character recognition, which enables border controllers and other law enforcement agents to process such passports more quickly without having to enter the information manually into a computer.

[47] A full list of recommended units can be found in annex 5 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation.

Instead, the Protocol invites developed countries to pursue the limitation or reduction of emissions through the International Civil Aviation Organization.

ICAO's environmental committee continues to consider the potential for using market-based measures such as trading and charging, but this work is unlikely to lead to global action.

This has led to some national policies such as fuel and emission taxes for domestic air travel in the Netherlands and Norway, respectively.

[53] ICAO is currently opposed to the inclusion of aviation in the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS).

[citation needed] ICAO has been called "flawed and biased in favour of the industry" by Jo Dardenne, the manager for aviation at Transport & Environment.

[54] On 6 October 2016, the ICAO finalized an agreement among its 191 member nations to address the more than 1000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted annually by international passenger and cargo flights.

The scheme did not take effect until 2021 and will be voluntary until 2027, but many countries, including the US and China, have promised to begin at its 2020 inception date.

A late draft of the agreement would have required the air transport industry to assess its share of global carbon budgeting to meet that objective, but the text was removed in the agreed version.

[61] Only 65 nations will participate in the initial voluntary period, not including significant emitters Russia, India and perhaps Brazil.

Taking a plane is the fastest and cheapest way to fry the planet and this deal won't reduce demand for jet fuel one drop.

ICAO has conducted four investigations involving air disasters, of which two were passenger airliners shot down while in international flight over hostile territory.