The Council of Administration (#CA), the Universal Postal Union’s (#UPU) governing body, launched the start of the next UPU four-year cycle with a two-day meeting last week. 

The CA has the power to approve proposals made by the Postal Operations Council (#POC) for the adoption of regulations or new procedures between Congresses in order to ensure that the UPU can react quickly to #changes in the #postalenvironment.

Last week the CA established its structure, based on 4 committees and their respective working groups:

– 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗲 𝟭 (Governance and Management of the Union)
o Finance 
o Human resources
o Audit 
o Provident Scheme
o System applied to contributions by Union member countries

– 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗲 𝟮 (Postal Policy and Regulation)
o USO and product offering (supply chain, quality of service, etc.)
o Remuneration policy and economic issues (affordability, cost, coverage, competition)
o #UN SDGs
o #Digital, trade and postal financial policies, #regulations, and inclusion
o #Resourcemobilization policy and strategy

– 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗲 𝟯 (Strategy, Postal Economics and Markets)
o #Strategydevelopment and financing methods
o #Strategyimplementation, monitoring and evaluation
o Postal statistics and economics
o Market research and analysis

– 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗲 𝟰 (Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance)
o #Development cooperation policy
o Technical assistance
o Disaster risk management
o Post4Health
o Quality of Service Fund 

The Consultative Committee (CC), a UPU body which reports directly to the CA, will host its constituent meeting on 24 January 2022. The  CC will welcome four new members each from the CA (CH, CN DZ, USA) and POC (AU, BR, MA, RO) serving until 1 July 2022 when the new UPU general regulation comes into force. 

Isaac Gnamba-Yao, the representative of Côte d’Ivoire and current Chair of the CA, said: “I think it is important that we maintain the spirit of Abidjan, and make every voice count, to ensure that there is no ‘us and them’ between developed and developing countries. We must work together to implement the initial activities on what will be a long road to 2025.”