The Rotterdam Convention

Short Description

The objectives of the Rotterdam Convention which was adopted on 10 September 1998 are:

• to promote shared responsibility and cooperative efforts among Parties in the international trade of certain hazardous chemicals in order to protect human health and the environment from potential harm;
• to contribute to the environmentally sound use of those hazardous chemicals by facilitating information exchange about their characteristics by providing for a national decision-making process on their import and export and by disseminating these decisions to Parties.

The Convention creates legally binding obligations for the implementation of the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure. It built on the voluntary PIC procedure initiated by UNEP and FAO in 1989 and ceased on 24 February 2006.

The Convention covers pesticides and industrial chemicals that have been banned or severely restricted for health or environmental reasons by Parties and which have been notified by Parties for inclusion in the PIC procedure.

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Website

  http://www.pic.int/TheConvention/Overview/tabid/1044/language/en-US/Default.aspx