Decisions on the BCH

COP-MOP Meetings

ICCP | MOP-1 | MOP-2 | MOP-3 | MOP-4

In decision BS-IV/2, Operations and activities of the Biosafety Clearing-House, the COP-MOP requested the Executive Secretary, among other things, to: (i) improve the ease of browsing search results and add online tools for statistical analysis and graphic representations of data; (ii) improve the structure of the common formats and simplify the registration procedure; (iii) implement a confirmation mechanism for the updating of information by Parties; (iv) continue assisting BCH national nodes through the maintenance and improvement of Hermes and the BCH Ajax Plug-in; (v) commission a study in order to assess what information is deemed useful by BCH users, and to prioritize the BCH work programme. The COP-MOP also urged the GEF to extend and provide additional funding to the UNEP-GEF BCH project in its current form with a view to ensuring the sustainability of national BCH nodes and providing more capacity-building support (Documents from the meeting).

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In decision BS-III/2, Operations and activities of the Biosafety Clearing-House, the COP-MOP among other things requested the Executive Secretary to: (i) continue to collaborate with nodes that are interlinked and interoperable with the BCH; (ii) make easily available decisions and other information on LMOs-FFP, risk assessments and decisions taken under the AIA procedure; (iii) undertake translation of the BCH into the 6 official UN languages; (iv) undertake an external security audit of the BCH and its infrastructure; (v) continue to develop non-Internet based mechanisms for countries to access information in the BCH; and undertake another survey of BCH users (Documents from the meeting).

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In decision BS-II/2, Operations and activities of the Biosafety Clearing-House, the COP-MOP adopted, following an internal review of the operation of the BCH conducted by the Secretariat, a Multi-year Program of Work for the Operation of the BCH contained in the annex to the decision (Documents from the meeting).

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In decision BS-I/3, Information-sharing and the Biosafety Clearing-House, the COP-MOP approved the transition of the pilot phase of the BCH to the fully operational phase. At this meeting, the Parties also adopted, in the annex to the decision, the Modalities of Operation of the BCH (Documents from the meeting).

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ICCP Meetings

Third Meeting of the ICCP (22-26 April 2002, The Hague, Netherlands): In the annex to the final report of the meeting, in section 3/3 on information sharing, a number of recommendations were made on the development and implementation of the pilot phase of the BCH.

For full texts: Annex to Recommendation 3/3, Third Note from the Bureau, Documents from the meeting

Second Meeting of the ICCP (1-5 October 2001, Nairobi, Kenya): The annex to the final report of the meeting, in section 2/8 on information sharing, contains the Second Note from the Bureau which re-emphasized that the primary audience for the pilot phase of the BCH is the Governments that will register and retrieve data from the system.

For full texts: Annex to Recommendation 2/8, Second Note from the Bureau, Documents from the meeting

First Meeting of the ICCP (11-15 December 2000, Montpellier, France): the ICCP recommended the development of a pilot phase of the BCH. It identified a number of elements and steps to guide the development of this pilot phase whose objectives were defined by the Committee.

For full texts: Report of the First ICCP meeting (UNEP/CBD/ICCP/1/9, annex 1) - First note from the Bureau, Documents from the meeting