The Member State of Costa Rica was elected on October 1, 2019, during the third part of this process at the 40th Session of the ICAO Assembly, in this cycle the election of States not elected in either the first or second part, whether or not they were candidates in any of those parts, whose designation ensures the representation in the Council of all the major geographical regions of the world.

The Representative of Costa Rica will succeed in this important position for the 2019-2022 triennium, the State Representative of Panama, who had the honor of representing Central America during the 2016-2019 period.

The ICAO Council decided that an electronic voting system using the six official languages of the United Nations (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish and French) would be used for Council elections at the 40th session of the Assembly. It being understood that manual voting with paper ballots would be maintained only as a backup method. The electronic voting system used was based on wireless technology and allowed delegates to vote from their seats by activating the necessary equipment, thus fully preserving anonymity.

Latin America will continue to be represented on the ICAO Council through eight States that were also elected and are also members of the Latin American Civil Aviation Commission (LACAC); Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and the Dominican Republic.

Following the election process, the Council is composed of 36 States: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Colombia, Egypt, Spain, Finland, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, United Arab Emirates, Greece, Equatorial Guinea, Malaysia, Paraguay, Peru, Republic of Korea, Dominican Republic, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Zambia.

COCESNA congratulates the Member State of Costa Rica on its election to the ICAO Council, as the international governing body of the most important policies governing international civil aviation, and also expresses its pleasure to continue contributing with all its Member States in achieving this important objective, which this year has been widely commemorated by the sixty (60) years (1959-2019) of continuity of the representation of Central America as a subregion before the ICAO.