In September the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) will hold its 38th meeting in Montreal, Canada, and it is hoped that at that meeting Taiwan will be able to secure observer status in the ICAO. If this comes about, it will be another milestone for Taiwan following its achievement of observer status in the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, back in 2009.

The bid is supported by the United States. In July 2013 President Barack Obama signed into law House Resolution 1151, which directs the Secretary of State to (a) “develop a strategy to obtain observer status for Taiwan” in Montreal and (b) “instruct the U.S. Mission to the ICAO to officially request observer status for Taiwan” and “urge ICAO member states to support Taiwan… participation in the ICAO.” Obama declared that the US government fully supports membership for Taiwan in international organizations that do not make statehood a criterion for membership, and that the US would take appropriate steps to promote Taiwan’s participation in the ICAO.

The ICAO was founded in 1944 when 52 countries signed the Convention on International Civil Aviation. The ROC was a founding member, but its seat was taken by mainland China when the ROC withdrew from the UN in 1971.

Under ICAO rules, a non-UN member state wishing to become an observer at the ICAO must get agreement from four-fifths of ICAO members—a very high barrier. Although the US supports Taiwan’s goal of becoming an observer, a key variable will be the attitude of mainland China.

Why is ICAO membership important? Because Taiwan is not currently an ICAO member, it does not get immediate notification of new Standards and Recommended Procedures (SARPs) set by the ICAO for civil aviation. This can lead to gaps in the management of aviation.

Jean Shen, director-general of Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration, offers a case in point. In October 2011 the ICAO decided to technically upgrade an airline route that terminates in Taiwan, to allow increased traffic on the route. The upgrading involved a change in the route’s designation, and also meant that only planes with the appropriate advanced technology could fly the route. But Taiwan was not informed, and did not learn of the change until less than a month before it took effect in May 2012. The procedures required to implement the name change throughout Taiwan’s air traffic control system took four months to complete, during which time aircraft using the route could not file their flight plans automatically; instead air traffic controllers had to handle each flight manually, adding greatly to their workload.

Shen notes that Taiwan has responsibility for the “Taipei flight information region” (Taipei FIR), which covers 180,000 square nautical miles and is contiguous with the FIRs of Fukuoka, Manila, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Taiwan is in a key position between the Philippines, Japan, and the southeast coast of mainland China, and every year more than 40 million passengers pass through the Taipei FIR, making Taiwan a critical link in the air transport network in East Asia. From the perspective of air safety, Taiwan should not be excluded from the ICAO.

Last September, at an APEC meeting in Vladivostok, Taiwan’s representative Lien Chan raised the subject of Taiwan’s ICAO participation with then mainland Chinese president Hu Jin­tao. Hu responded that the mainland would seriously study the possibility of Taiwan participating in the ICAO “in a suitable capacity.”

In mid-August 2013, when asked about the issue, President Ma Ying-jeou stated that the government would use every available channel to communicate with all parties, including mainland China.

The ICAO is currently promoting a “Global Safety Information Exchange” (GSIE) mechanism, hoping to coordinate all flight safety information sharing systems. A seamless security web is also required in order to reduce the air transport network’s vulnerability to terrorist attack. Taiwan needs to get substantial access to ICAO information, so that everyone can work together to protect the lives and property of travelers worldwide.