Summary

  • African administrations propose that the ITU Council approve technical or organizational edits to its Independent Management Advisory Committee's charter, while changes to its mandate, authority, independence or composition go to the Plenipotentiary Conference.
  • The adopted 2022 text sent proposed changes to the Council for approval without this four-part reservation. The six-expert committee remains advisory under the new draft.

A watchdog can keep its name while losing the room key. Rewrite what it may examine, whom it may question or how independent its members must be, and the same committee can perform a different job. The African proposal to revise ITU Resolution 162 puts a lock on that editorial privilege.

The resolution adopted in 2022 established the Independent Management Advisory Committee, IMAC, as a standing six-expert body attached to the ITU Council. It advises on financial reporting, audit, internal controls, risk and governance. It can seek records and staff. It has no management or executive power. Its terms of reference said proposed amendments went to the Council for approval.

The new draft draws a line through that last sentence. Council could still approve technical or organizational changes. An amendment affecting mandate, authority, independence or composition would have to be referred to the Plenipotentiary Conference. The same division appears in a proposed new Council instruction and in the rewritten annex on the committee's terms of reference. Four words move a consequential charter change from the standing body that receives IMAC's advice to the wider conference of Member States.

This is not a proposal to give IMAC the power to run the ITU. Its advisory status remains. The point is who may redraw the limits of that advice. A change to meeting logistics belongs in a different basket from one that narrows access to records or relaxes the conditions for a supposedly independent seat. Classification of a proposed amendment will therefore matter as much as the vote that follows it.

The ITU contribution register lists the addendum as posted on 25 October. PP-26 will consider it in November. Readers can judge the eventual rule by a simple test: when a charter change touches one of the four protected subjects, can it be stopped at Council, or must the people who conferred the mandate see it?

Official sources