Intersessional Task Groups are established by the Chemical Review Committee (CRC) to undertake an initial assessment of selected new notifications of final regulatory action and proposals for severely hazardous pesticide formulations scheduled for consideration by the CRC.
Intersessional Task Groups prepare reports, which includes an assessment of whether specific notifications meet the criteria set out in Annex II to the Rotterdam Convention and whether the severely hazardous pesticide formulations proposals meet the criteria set out in part 3 of Annex IV to the Convention. The notifications and proposals for severely hazardous pesticide formulations are made available on the meeting documents webpage. The initial review by the Intersessional Task Groups is intended to facilitate the work of the Committee and does not replace the requirement for each of the notifications and proposals to be considered by the entire Committee.
The intersessional task group work ahead of the twentieth meeting of the Committee will start on 1 May 2024.
The draft reports that will be posted on this page will be finalized at the task group pre-meetings, to be held on 16 September 2024, prior to the Committee’s twentieth meeting. The Task Group pre-meetings are open to all Committee members as well as to observers registered to participate in the twentieth meeting of the CRC. The final reports from the Task Groups will be made available to the whole Committee as electronic Conference Room Papers (CRPs) for the meeting.
In line with the procedure for dealing with notifications of final regulatory action to ban or severely restrict a chemical (section 1.6 of the Handbook of working procedures and policy guidance for the Chemical Review Committee), the Bureau of the Chemical Review Committee decided to prioritize notifications of final regulatory action that would undergo intersessional work prior to the twentieth meeting of the Committee. Thus, a number of notifications that according to the preliminary review undertaken by the Secretariat and the Bureau appear to not meet the criteria of Annex II to the Convention, would not undergo intersessional work but would be considered directly by the Committee at its twentieth meeting. Further information and the rationale for this selection is being provided in document UNEP/FAO/RC/CRC.20/2.