Rotterdam Convention

The objective of the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade is to promote shared responsibility and cooperative efforts among Parties in the international trade of certain hazardous chemicals, in order to protect human health and the environment from potential harm and to contribute to their environmentally sound use by facilitating information exchange about their characteristics, providing for a national decision-making process on their import and export and disseminating these decisions to Parties.
The governments are obligated to make an export notification a priori before actual exports of chemicals to other states, as part of the regulatory action they take in order to ban or greatly restrict a chemical, for reasons of protecting environmental and human health, according to the Pre-Informed Consent procedure jointly implemented by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, under the framework of the Rotterdam Convention, which was adopted and opened for signature in 1998 and entered into force in 2004 for states which have become parties thereto.
As of now, the total number of States Parties to this Convention has risen to 154 with a great participation. The Rotterdam Convention was signed by Turkey on 10th of September 1998 at the Diplomatic Conference of the PIC Convention. Ministry of Environment and Urbanization of Turkey has started the procedures to be the party of the convention. The “Draft Law on Ratification of Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade” was referred to the Turkish Grand National Assembly in July, 2010. The Draft Law in question was adopted by the Environmental Commission of the Turkish Grand National Assembly on 26th of November 2011, following discussions. Although the General Assembly has taken the draft law 2 times to the agenda , it has not become law until the General Elections held in 2011 and 2015 respectively, it has become obsolete state 2 times.