IPEN

At the 2015 World Social Forum, held in March in Tunis, Tunisia, Semia Gharbi, from the organization Association d'Education Environnementale pour la Future Génération (AEEFG), IPEN's Regional Hub for the Middle East & North Africa, organized a presentation on the activities of IPEN, its goals for a toxics-free future, its relationship with the human right to a healthy life, and an overview of chemicals in general. Various IPEN publications were distributed. The presentation was one of hundreds of events held during the Forum, and was conducted as a round table discussion with participants from Tunisia, Egypt, Germany, and other countries. 

WE, concerned organizations from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, express our support for the early ratification and effective implementation of the Minamata Convention on Mercury.  As advocates for our people’s constitutional rights to health and to a healthful environment, we urge the executive and legislative branches of the government to speed up the ratification process of the Convention,

(Jakarta) A preliminary exploration of the impact of mercury use in three Indonesian artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) communities found that one-third of the people in one community satisfied WHO guidelines for mercury poisoning along with many children with birth defects, nervous system damage and delayed development. 

The Stockholm Convention established a science-based process for new persistent organic pollutants (POPs) under the Stockholm Convention. The Convention recognizes that a lack of full scientific certainty should not prevent a candidate substance from proceeding in the evaluation or listing and clearly mandates Parties to decide on listing “in a precautionary manner.” This new Guide (English /русский /español / français / العربية) highlights three new candidates for listing in the Convention in 2015 - pentachlorophenol, hexachlorobutadiene, and chlorinated naphthalenes - and provides the POPs Review Committee's recommendation for which annex the POPs should be listed under in the Convention, the chemicals' uses, alternatives, adverse effects, and more.