In October 2023, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) had the privilege to jointly take over the leadership of the International Charter: Space and Major Disasters (the Charter) from the UK Space Agency, for a 6-month period.

Under the joint leadership arrangement, CSA was in charge of monitoring calls and coordinating Charter members' responses, while EUMETSAT undertook the administrative tasks of the leadership role.

Representatives from the Charter member agencies met at EUMETSAT headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany, in the third week of October 2023. This meeting - the 50th since the Charter was founded - involved a week of discussions about the operations and status of the Charter. Two days in that week were also dedicated to training project managers to ensure they can make best use of the satellite data they receive in their role coordinating Charter activations.

During the EUMETSAT/CSA leadership period, there were a total of 28 activations for which the Charter members collectively offered their support and services, the most recent activation being for the Mount Ruang volcano eruption in Indonesia which occurred on 17 April.

In this period, the National Disaster Risk Management Office (NDRMO) of Tonga successfully applied for being an Authorised User of the Charter, under the principle of Universal Access. Under this principle, which allows the Charter members to further strengthen the Charter's contribution to disaster management worldwide, any national disaster management authority is able to submit requests to the Charter for emergency response.

This brings the total number of Charter Authorised Users to 99 in 88 countries.

The German Aerospace Centre (DLR) has taken over the reins of the Charter leadership, starting from 24 April 2024. It hosted the 51st Meeting of the Charter in Bonn, Germany, in the week of 22 April.