Introduction

UNEP Governing Council Decision 19/13C, adopted in February 1997, promotes international action to protect human health and the environment through measures to reduce and/or eliminate releases of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). This decision call on UNEP to prepare for and convene an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to prepare a legally binding instrument on POPs, the first meeting of which will take place in Montreal, Canada from 29 June - 3 July 1998.

The INC's mandate is to focus initially on international actions on a list of twelve POPs, which can be grouped into three categories:

• pesticide POPs: aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, and toxaphene;
• industrial chemical POPs: hexachlorobenzene and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs); and
• POPs that are unintended byproducts: dioxins and furans.

The INC is also to establish an expert group to develop science-based criteria and a process for identifying additional POPs as candidates for future action.

Decision 19/13C also calls on UNEP to initiate a number of immediate actions including: POPs information exchange, improve availability of information on alternatives to POPs, assist countries in identifying PCBs and develop an inventory of PCB destruction capacity, assist countries in identifying dioxin and furan sources.

Directly, following the adoption of UNEP Governing Council Decision 19/13C, at the second session the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (IFCS) decided to extend and revise the mandate of its Ad hoc Working Group on POPs to assist in preparing the POPs INC process and to focus government action on POPs.

In view of the complementary mandates of UNEP and IFCS it was determined that an effective way to begin information exchange on POPs and to prepare governments for the upcoming negotiations was to jointly conduct a series of regional and subregional POPs Awareness Raising Workshops for developing countries and countries with economies in transition across the globe. The first of these meetings was held in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1-4 July 1997 for countries of the New Independent States subregion. The second workshop was held in Bangkok, Thailand from 25-28 November 1997 for the Asia and the Pacific region.

This, the third Awareness Raising Workshop was held in Bamako, Mali from 15-18 December 1997 for Francophone Africa and other countries in West/North-West Africa (list of participants is attached). It was financed by UNEP, IFCS and some donor countries including Iceland, Canada, Norway and the United States of America. Expert presentations were also provided by a few leading experts from countries outside the region as well as a number of intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations (Programme of the meeting is enclosed).

These proceedings contain reports from the two workshop working groups (industrial chemicals and contaminants; and pesticides) and presentations describing the significance of the POPs problem, efforts made in a number of countries to address them, and recent regional and international developments relating to POPs. These proceedings will be made available at the first POPs INC session.

Other workshops are to take place in: Cartagena, Colombia(27-30 January1998); Lusaka, Zambia (17-20 March 1998); Puerto Iguazú, Argentina (1-3 April 1998); Kranjska Gora, Slovenia (11-14 May 1998) and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (7-9 June 1998).