Ethical framework

The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation believes strongly in the importance of transparency and openness in all that we do. To this end, we have created a set of ethical guidelines that underlie all of our actions, and with which we request that all potential members agree before joining. A summary of the main principles of the guidelines, is given below, and the full version is available as a pdf document.

CTO’s Ethical framework
  • The CTO as an organisation and our employees individually, aim to maintain the highest ethical standards. All our operations are based on integrity and transparency. We value the trust and confidence of our wider stakeholder network including members, employees, partners and, particularly, the people living in our member countries. We value diversity both at the workplace and across the Organisation.
  • We treat all our employees with respect and dignity; we recruit, promote and remunerate employees based on suitability, merit and inclusiveness, without discrimination, and provide them with opportunities for advancement. Both the CTO and our employees consider health and safety to be of paramount importance.
  • We will treat all our stakeholders including members and partners with respect, honesty and fairness. We will ensure good value and consistent quality in our services, and provide redress if a service is found to be lower than the agreed standards. The CTO and our employees will respect the property of our stakeholders including intellectual property.
  • We will form business relationships on the basis of objective criteria including adherence to ethical standards that are not lower than these standards. Payments to business partners will only be for actual services rendered. We impose strict rules on receipt of gifts or favours by employees from business partners; our employees will not solicit gifts or favours and will never accept money.
  • We will make a positive contribution to the communities in which we work while complying with applicable laws and regulations and being sensitive to local customs and conventions.
  • We will ensure the protection of employees in instances where compliance with our code of ethics endangers the reaching of financial or other targets.