ABSTRACT
Establishing the exact time during the negotiating of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety when the annexes became a distinct reality is difficult, but the primordial broth of the protocol probably already contained this element by early 1997. The annexes thus proposed by the African Group and Norway dealt mainly with the information required for advance informed agreement, risk assessment and risk management and contained most of the substantive text of the annexes in the final biosafety protocol. The decision to amend the status of Contact Group-1 to that of a technical subgroup of SWG-1 had both a positive and a negative impact on the rate of progress of negotiations on the annexes. During the course of Biosafety Working Group-4, both Sub-Working Group 1 and Sub-Working Group 2 identified a further several possible annexes, bringing the total list of annexes to 22, including the two that Contact Group-1 had been working on.
