The text of the Rotterdam Convention was adopted on September 10, 1998 by a Conference of Plenipotentiaries in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The Convention entered into force on February 24, 2004.
The objectives of the Agreement are as follows:
- Promote shared responsibility and joint efforts of the Parties in the international trade of certain hazardous chemicals in order to protect human health and the environment from potential harm.
- Contribute to their environmentally sound use, facilitating the exchange of information about their characteristics, establishing a national decision-making process on their import and export and disseminating these decisions to the Parties.
The Convention creates legally binding obligations for the implementation of the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure. It builds on the existing voluntary PIC procedure, initiated by UNEP and FAO in 1989 and concluded on 24 February 2006.
