International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

HISTORY AND PRESENT STATUS

The ITU was founded in Paris in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union. The current name "International Telecommunication Union" was decided by the Madrid Plenipotentiary Conference in 1932. ITU activities are governed by the ITU Constitution adopted in 1992 and as revised at the plenipotentiary Conference at Minneapolis, USA in 1998.

The ITU has eight purposes:

To maintain and extend international co-operation among all its member states for the improvement and rational use of all kinds of telecommunications
To promote and enhance participation in activities of the Union and foster fruitful co-operation and partnership to fulfil the objectives of the Union
To promote and offer technical assistance to developing countries in the field of telecommunications and also to mobilise material, human and financial resources needed and promote access to information
To promote the development of technical facilities and their most efficient operation to improve efficiency and usefulness of telecommunications by making them widely available to the public
To promote the extension of new telecommunication technologies to all the world’s inhabitants
To promote the use of telecommunications services to facilitate peaceful relations
To harmonise actions of member states and promote fruitful and constructive co-operation and partnership between member states and sector members to attain those ends
To promote, at the international level, a broader approach to issues of telecommunications in the global information economy.
South Africa became a member of the ITU in 1881. In 1965 following the Montreux Plenipotentiary Conference South Africa was excluded from participating in meetings of the Organisation but continued to remain a member of the organisation. A follow-up decision taken at the 1989 Plenipotentiary Conference in Nice resolved that South Africa would continue to be excluded from all conferences, meetings and activities of the ITU until such time as apartheid policies were eliminated. This resolution was set aside by the Executive Council on 9 May 1994 and formally adopted during the 1994 Plenipotentiary Conference. South Africa submitted instruments of accession to the constitution, convention and optional protocol of the ITU on 30 June 1994, thus permitting its full participation in the ITU with effect from the 1994 Plenipotentiary Conference held in Japan. At that conference and at the subsequent conferences in Minneapolis, in 1998 and Marrakech, in 2002, South Africa was nominated and elected to membership of the Council.

OTHER DEPARTMENTS AND COOPERATING ORGANISATIONS

Department of Communications
Telkom
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Contacts in Foreign Affairs
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