The New Delhi Declaration did something more useful than another paragraph on multilateralism. It welcomed the 2016 amendment to Article 50(a) of the Chicago Convention, which expands the ICAO Council from 36 states to 40, and then named two candidates for the extra chairs. Ethiopia, the African Union’s sole endorsed candidate for an expanded African seat. Indonesia, for one of the new Asia-Pacific places. That election is not abstract. ICAO has already set an Extraordinary Assembly in Montreal on 19 and 20 November 2026 to fill the four new Council seats after Ecuador’s ratification on 12 June became the 128th deposit and brought the protocol into force. The Air Navigation Commission grows from 19 members to 21 at the same time. BRICS has therefore attached its political weight to a live ballot that will decide who sits in the room when Standards and Recommended Practices, CORSIA accounting, air-navigation procedures and unmanned-aircraft rules are argued.
The Council is not a talking shop. It elects the Secretary General, adopts SARPs that become national law, can investigate disputes under the Convention, and filters the Air Navigation Commission’s technical work before it binds 193 states. Article 50(b) still splits membership three ways. States of chief importance in air transport. States that contribute most to air-navigation facilities. Geographic representation. The four new seats were sold in 2016 as a correction for regions that grew faster than the 36-seat map. Africa already holds a large block among the existing 36 after the 2025 Assembly returned eight African members. An extra Ethiopian seat would deepen that. Indonesia last sat on the Council in 2001 and is campaigning with AirNav modernisation, a $250,000 assistance pledge and claimed support from about 70 to 80 states. Four new votes do not overturn Europe and North America. They do change who can table a paper on SAF book-and-claim, remote aerodrome inspection, drone corridors or airport-charge guidance without asking a larger neighbour to speak first.
BRICS is not yet a single ICAO caucus. India, China, Brazil, Russia and South Africa already sit or rotate through the Council as major air-transport or geographic states. Egypt is there. Ethiopia and Indonesia want in. The declaration also committed members to deeper work on sustainable transport infrastructure and sustainable aviation fuel, without writing a common CORSIA number or a joint drone code. That is the honest limit. A bloc that includes Iran and the UAE can agree that Africa and Asia-Pacific deserve chairs. It has not agreed a shared emissions methodology, a shared view of war-risk NOTAMs, or a shared position on who certifies a Chinese or Brazilian regional jet for third-country use. India’s own ICAO weight in 2026 is the combination of traffic growth, a regulator under political scrutiny, a coming SAF blend mandate and a large order book that still depends on Western type certificates. Hosting the summit and blessing two candidacies is influence. It is not a substitute for sending technically dense working papers to Montreal and staffing the Council delegation with people who can survive an Air Navigation Commission argument. The November ballot will show whether BRICS can convert a communique into four votes, or whether the extra seats go to whoever did the quieter campaigning after the family photograph.