In December 2018, UN Environment in consultation with the Environmental Quality Authority of Palestine, organized a workshop in Ramallah, Palestine, to building the capacity of national focal points of the multilateral environmental agreements in the country on integrating international environmental law in diplomacy and national development plans.
The national focal points were from the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The workshop was attended by close to 30 officials who expressed their interests in water-related matters and the transboundary use of water resources. Since becoming a non-member observer State in the United Nations in 2012, the Palestinian government has, over the years, become a party to several multilateral environmental agreements.
Palestine’s National Policy Agenda is being implemented through 18 sectoral and three cross-sectoral strategies, one of which is environment. At the meeting, the Palestinian government was urged to enhance its efforts to become party to other multilateral environmental agreements such as the Minamata Convention on Mercury, in the near future.
For more information, please contact, Sylvia.Bankobeza[at]un.org I Aphrodite.Smagadi[at]un.org.
