RAP-AL Proposal on SAICM

The following proposals where presented at the last SAICM GRULAC meeting, that took place in Punta del Este on April 27-28, 2005.

During this meeting, RAPAL proposed the following additions to the high level political declaration:

  1. To recognize the importance of making efforts to afford special protection to vulnerable segments of the population (children, women, the elderly or the infirm) in the face of potential chemical risks.
  1. To urge the international community and those involved in the chemical life cycle, especially those in the production chain, to internalize the costs of sound chemical management in order to insure the implementation of SAICM.
  1. To point out the need to guarantee an open and transparent access to information and to information exchange, in order to promote the greater dissemination of all pertinent information about chemical hazards and their effects on human health.
  1. To emphasize the importance of research, monitoring and the collection of data on human health and environmental effects as a condition for the production and use of chemicals. This point is very highly connected with the previous one.

As “concrete measures”, RAPAL proposes the following:

  1. To modify all references to “humans” or “human health” as generic terms in the SAICM documents, and to replace them with more specific ones, such as “children, the elderly, workers, women...”, or “women and vulnerable groups (children, elderly and workers) health”.
  1. To modify all references to “good agricultural practices”, adding the following sentence: “production systems that protect the environment”.
  1. To broaden all references to “highly toxic pesticides” so as to include also CMRs (or carcinogens, mutagens and reproductive toxins) and all chemicals with chronic effects.
  1. To gather, analize and disseminate all available information on chemicals that pose risks to the health of women or vulnerable groups, or to reproduction and breast-feeding.
  1. To prepare or bring up to date national or regional evaluations on environmental health and chemical safety, with special emphasis on women and other vulnerable groups, defining priorities and the basis to create participative action plans.
  1. To create, together with local women and other vulnerable groups’s organizations, guidelines that may help them in their campaigning and evaluation preparations.
  1. To adopt adequate measures, according to each country situation, to guarantee the appropiate information, awareness and education of women and governmental, inter-govermental and non-governemental organizations.