Azerbaijan formalizes accession to Rotterdam Convention

President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has officially ratified the country’s accession to the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade.

The convention, originally adopted in Rotterdam on September 10, 1998, aims to enhance global chemical safety and facilitate informed decision-making in the trade of potentially dangerous substances, Caliber.Az reports.

The Rotterdam Convention is an international treaty designed to facilitate informed decision-making by countries with regard to trade in hazardous chemicals. It establishes a list of covered chemicals and requires parties seeking to export a chemical on that list to first establish that the intended importing country has consented to the import. The Convention entered into force on February 24, 2004.

The Rotterdam Convention establishes a prior informed consent (“PIC”) procedure to ensure that certain hazardous chemicals are not exported to countries that do not wish to receive them. The PIC procedure does not ban or restrict any chemicals, nor does it mean that any individual country must automatically prohibit their import. Parties implement the PIC procedure through extensive information exchange, priority attention to national decisions on imports, and obligations related to export controls.

The Rotterdam Convention applies to industrial chemicals and pesticides that meet the criteria for listing under the Convention, generally because they have been banned or severely restricted in party countries or are severely hazardous pesticide formulations.

By Vafa Guliyeva