Regional African consultations on the effectiveness of the Rotterdam Convention

The objective of the Rotterdam convention is to promote shared responsibility and cooperative efforts in the international trade of certain hazardous substances, to protect human health and the environment from potential harm. It aims to contribute to their environmentally sound use by facilitating information exchange and by providing for a national decision-making process on their import and export. At the heart of the convention is the ‘prior informed consent procedure’ (PIC), a mechanism for formally obtaining and disseminating decisions of importing Parties about whether or not Parties want to receive shipments of the substances listed in annex III. For each of the substances listed in annex III, a decision guidance document (DGD) is prepared and sent to all Parties. The DGD is intended to help governments assess the risks connected with the handling and use of the chemical and make more informed decisions about future import and use of the chemical, taking into account local conditions. However, there is a problem of concern to many Parties to the Rotterdam convention: the Conference of the Parties (COP) has failed to include a number of substances within the scope of the prior informed consent procedure which is at the heart of the convention by listing the chemicals in Annex III, even though those substances have met all the scientific criteria set out in the convention and a large majority of the parties have supported listing.