The Committee held its long-awaited inaugural meeting, setting in motion a comprehensive agenda aimed at securing the implementation and compliance with the obligations under the Convention.
Geneva, 28 November 2025 – In an intensive three half-day online sessions, the Committee advanced a series of decisive measures to strengthen implementation and compliance with the Convention’s core obligations. These included obligations to designate country contacts, to transmit national reports, to transmit national implementation plans, to develop legislation and to take other measures to eliminate and restrict persistent organic pollutants. These actions also aim to reduce or eliminate releases from unintentional production as well as from stockpiles and wastes. The Committee also initiated its work to strengthen Parties’ implementation of the obligations related to the provision of technical assistance and financial resources to developing countries and countries with economies in transition. The Committee built on this momentum by further launching its engagement to work with the Implementation and Compliance Committees of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal and the Rotterdam Conventionon the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. Finally, the Committee initiated its works towards identifying questions relating to individual Parties’ compliance.
Expressing her satisfaction with the progress achieved, the Chair of the Committee, Ms. Jimena Nieto Carrasco (Colombia), said that “In some respects, the Committee has to catch up with more than twenty years of developments under the Convention, and I am proud to say that the members succeeded in setting strong foundations for its important work”.
The Committee agreed that going forward, it will review updated, detailed data on the status of Parties’ implementation of their obligations. The upcoming discussions will draw on information about activities by the Secretariat and key partners, including the Global Environment Facility, the United Nations Environment Programme and the 17 Stockholm Convention Regional and Sub-regional Centres, aimed at improving the implementation of the Convention. They will also review insights on challenges faced by Parties in meeting specific obligations under the Convention and consider possible recommendations on how to improve Parties’ implementation of the Convention.
“The Committee will help ensure that Parties, individually and collectively, comply with their obligations,” noted the Executive Secretary of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, Mr. Rolph Payet. He went on to underscore that the work programme of the
Committee was a testimony to Parties’ ambition to ensure that all the obligations embedded in the Convention are implemented and that the Convention fulfils its objective to protect human health and the environment from the harmful impacts of persistent organic pollutants.
The Committee agreed to hold its second meeting in Geneva in June 2026, back-to-back with the meetings of the Compliance Committees of the Basel Convention and the Rotterdam Convention, and to hold a joint session with those Committees on 19 June 2026.
The Vice Chair of the Committee, Mark Govoni (Switzerland), emphasized the benefits derived from the cooperation between the three committees given the similarities in the obligations under the three convention and in the challenges Parties may face. He added, “It is also an advantage to the conduct of our work that the same Secretariat in serving the three Committees.”
The work of the Stockholm Convention Compliance Committee benefits from generous financial support provided by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the European Union.
Note to editors
The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, adopted in 2001 and entered into force in 2004, is a global treaty requiring its 186 Parties to take measures to eliminate or reduce the release of POPs into the environment, to protect human health and the environment from chemicals that remain intact for long periods, become widely distributed geographically, accumulate in the fatty tissue of humans and wildlife, and have harmful impacts on human health or on the environment. The Convention currently controls 37 chemicals or groups of chemicals, including polychlorinated dioxins and furans, PCBs, DDT, PFOS, and others.
The compliance procedures of the Stockholm Convention were adopted in 2023, and the first cohort of members of the Compliance Committee was elected in 2025. The objective of the compliance procedures is to assist Parties to comply with their obligations under the Convention and to facilitate, promote, assist in, advise on and aim to secure the implementation of and compliance with the obligations under the Convention. The Compliance Committee, composed of 15 members serving objectively and in the best interests of the Convention, is mandated on one hand, to examine systemic issues of general compliance and implementation of interest to all Parties, and on the other hand to consider submissions or questions of compliance relating to individual Parties, with a view to establishing the facts and the root causes of the matter of concern and to assisting in its resolution.
For information on the Compliance Committee of the Stockholm Convention, contact: Juliette Voinov Kohler, Senior Legal Officer and Chief, Governance Branch, BRS Secretariat, juliette.kohler@un.org.
For media inquiries, contact: Maria Cristina Cardenas, Senior Policy and Strategy Advisor of the BRS Secretariat, maria-cristina.cardenas@un.org.