In 2007, the international community celebrates the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the space age and the 40th anniversary of the major founding international treaty: the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. This treaty contains the essential principles governing activities in space and particularly the freedom of conducting activities in outer space without any extension in outer space of geographic sovereignty limitations.

Over the years, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN-COPUOS), which held its 50th session in June 2007, has continued to build a body of international conventions and General Assembly resolutions which form the backbone of the legal regime and/or recommended practice in many areas of space activities.

The Plenary Event focused on the many contributions of the UN system to the development of a peaceful use of space, with presentations by high-level representatives from the UN Secretariat, from ITU, from WMO and from UNESCO.

The Moderator was Gerard Brachet, UN-COPUOS Chair and the speakers were Mr Sergio Camacho Lara (UN-OOSA), Yvon Henri (ITU), Jeremia Lengoasa (WMO) and Mario Hernandez (UNESCO)

After a brief introduction of the topic and the speakers, the moderator invited Mr Camacho to address the plenary.

Mr Camacho in his address detailed the evolution of UN-OOSA and COPUOS. He touched upon the achievements of the Legal Sub Committee of COPUOS; the major ones being the five space treaties. Detailing the achievements of the Scientific and technical sub committee he touched upon the recent achievement towards adoption of the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines and the implementation of the UNISPACE III recommendations.

This was followed by the address of the ITU representative. Yvon Henri  talked about the origin and evolution of ITU and explained the goals and regulations put in place towards achieving this. He commented upon the forthcoming world radio conference - WRC 2007 to be held between 22 Oct to 16 Nov 2007. He concluded by mentioning that ITU's ambition is to "connect the world".

The WMO representative, Jeremia Lengoasa, briefed the audience on the WMO activities and how they are using space assets effectively to support them. He briefed that in future they would initiate activities towards better coordination and utilization of space assets by helping to avoid duplication.

The UNESCO presentation highlighted the use of space technology for monitoring world heritage sites. Mr Hernandez also touched upon the extensive usage of space technology by their Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. He touched upon the difficulties in convincing decision makers to allocate funds for Space assets based activities, when they concentrate on food and shelter security in the developing world. He concluded his presentation in an optimistic note by quoting the example of ISRO who has shown the world that investment in space generates resources more than investments and multiplies their developmental results.