The Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) and the Government of Luxembourg will conduct a Satellite Community Business Consultation on 9 June 2015 in Luxembourg, under the auspices of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). 

The ETC network of humanitarian, private sector and government organisations has commenced implementation of the newly endorsed ETC2020 Strategy. This progressive strategy seeks to create an emergency response environment that provides humanitarians, affected populations and governments with a seamless, resilient and principled communications experience, facilitating the delivery and receipt of humanitarian aid. The active engagement and contribution of the satellite sector in realization of this strategy is crucial.

The aim of this Business Consultation is to shape a coherent, predictable, end-to-end satellite-based response mechanism that supports the ETC2020 strategy, ensuring necessary preparedness, capacity building and training initiatives, and making best use of satellite connectivity in crises operations.

In humanitarian emergencies, access to information and communications is a basic human need alongside food, water and shelter. Through this Business Consultation the Satellite Community will work to establish an industry charter to address this need. This will take a similar shape to the Mobile sector's Humanitarian Connectivity Charter, an agreed set of non-commercial initiatives demonstrating that entire industries can align to better support humanitarian responders, affected people and governments in disaster operations.