This map was prepared for the Middle East Region Air Navigation Meeting of the Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization (PICAO), which took place in Cairo, Egypt, in October 1946. It shows political borders and recommended facilities for search and rescue, including rescue-coordinating and rescue-alerting centers, bases for different types of search-and-rescue aircraft, and facilities for surface vessels. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) was established under a convention signed by 52 countries at the November 1944 International Civil Aviation Conference in Chicago. From August 1945 to August 1947, as the Chicago convention was being ratified, PICAO began work on the rules, regulations, and technical standards for the postwar civil aviation system. The work of PICAO, and later of ICAO, was organized on a regional basis. The Middle East Region, as demarcated on this map, ran from Benghazi, Libya, in the west to the western coast of India in the east, and included Sudan and the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, and a part of Greece.