The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade is a global legally binding agreement that entered into force in 2004. Its objectives are to:
- promote shared responsibility and cooperative efforts among Parties in the international trade of certain chemicals in order to protect human health and the environment;
- contribute to the environmentally sound use of those hazardous chemicals by facilitating information exchange about their characteristics, including by providing for a national decision-making process on their import and export and by disseminating these decisions to Parties.
Notifications of final regulatory action are the means by which Parties inform the Secretariat of their actions to ban or severely restrict a chemical for human health and environmental reasons. Summaries of new notifications of final regulatory action are published each June and December in the PIC Circular and are in the database of notifications of final regulatory action.
Import responses are the decisions provided by Parties indicating whether or not they will consent to import the chemicals listed in Annex III of the Convention and subject to the PIC procedure. All import responses submitted by Parties are published each June and December in the PIC Circular and are available in the database of import responses.
