ABSTRACT
The 1998 Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade commits exporters of chemicals restricted in their own countries to notify importers of this through a prior informed consent procedure (PIC). The Convention created a legally binding character to Article 9 of the voluntary Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) 1986 International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides, inspired by the 1984 Bhopal chemical plant disaster in India. The Rotterdam Convention features a Chemical Review Committee, which considers proposals from Parties or NGOs for including new chemicals to the automatically triggered PIC list. The establishment of PIC as a binding international rule was sealed by eventually gaining the support of the chemical industry in the early 1990s, after initial opposition, after a civil society campaign led by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN), an alliance of nongovernmental organizations.
