Dear FAFICS Member Associations,
You are invited to have a delegation participate in the 56 th FAFICS Council, which will be held at the
Vienna International Centre (VIC), Austria, from 20-24 July 2026. Please note that the Council will
hold full-day sessions, starting on Monday, 20 July, and most likely a half-day session on Friday, 24
July. Also, please note that, for FAFICS Bureau members, the Council begins on Sunday, 19 July, with
a Bureau meeting in the afternoon. As in recent years, this Council will be a hybrid meeting,
encouraging in-person attendance but with remote participation, including voting, available.
FAFICS is once again pleased to collaborate with ARICSA and UNOV in organizing this Council
meeting. There will be a modest cocktail reception on Monday, 20 July 2026, right after the open
Committee meetings, to be held within the same building. As in the past, a self-funded group dinner will
be explored for one evening that week. ARICSA has prepared the attached information sheet (Annex
A), which addresses most logistical aspects of this Council meeting.
Attached are the provisional agenda and a call for inclusion of agenda items you feel require Council
guidance and/or decision (see Annex C). The plan is to dedicate the first day to focused open meetings
on Pension and After-Service Health Insurance issues and other Standing Committee matters. Please
send in your suggestions by 30 April 2026. Please note that all suggestions for agenda items outside the
Bureau's predetermined items must be accompanied by a concept note or background paper to justify
their inclusion.
As already mentioned in a recent President’s letter on succession planning, there will be elections for
important positions whose terms end this July, including the President, Vice-Presidents, and the
Treasurer. A call for nominations will be issued separately, with a deadline and submission
requirements. Nominations must be submitted on or before 1 June 2026. Please prepare nominations
from your Association promptly.
Regarding the registration of delegations, we are pleased to note that UNOV will use Indico (as we did
last year) for both in-person and virtual participants to the Council meeting. Registration will be open
from 15 May -15 July 2026. We will send the registration link and instructions in due course, but in the
meantime, you can familiarise yourself with Indico using the instructions we used last year. You may

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use the same username and password as you used last time, if you already have an account. New
participants must create an Indico account.
We encourage you to register your delegation (both in-person and virtual) early in the process, once the
Indico system opens. The Indico registration of in-person attendees will be used to obtain security
clearance and ID issuance from UNOV’s Department of Safety and Security. Please note that UN “R”
(retiree) badges from duty stations other than Vienna are, as in the past, still not acceptable. You will
receive a conference badge on Monday, 20 July, when you first enter the VIC.
For those requiring visa support letters, please advise the FAFICS secretariat well ahead of the
registration period.
To summarize, here are the deadlines that Member Associations need to be reminded of:

 Submission of any additional agenda items, with supporting documentation, including
specifically any proposals affecting the Rules of Procedure, on or before 30 April 2026.
 Submission and registration of delegations to the FAFICS 56 th Council, from 15 May-15
July 2026.
 Nominations to elective positions, once the call is made, are to be submitted on or before
1 June 2026.

Please be reminded that the Council's working language is English. As in the past, we will try to provide
French and Spanish executive summaries of important documents, as needed. We are exploring
interpretation options for the Council meeting.
We will send you updates along the way. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions at
this point. You may reach FAFICS through president@fafics.org and/or secretary@fafics.org.

We look forward to seeing you soon.
Sincerely,

Jerry Barton
FAFICS President