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RULES OF PROCEDURE

At the first session of the Plenary, ICCBD Chair Amb. Vincente S nchez proposed the creation of a drafting group (Friends of the Chair) to "polish" the rules of procedure before they are formally discussed by the Plenary. The rules of procedure were negotiated at the first session of the ICCBD, but were not adopted. Due to the objection of several delegates, it was agreed that the rules of procedure would be discussed by the Plenary before they were "cleaned-up" by a contact group, chaired by Patrick Sz‚ll of the UK.

The Plenary first discussed the rules of procedure (UNEP/CBD/IC/2/3) on Wednesday, 22 June 1994. The 57 rules cover purpose, definitions, place of meetings, dates of meetings, observers, agenda, representation and credentials, officers, subsidiary bodies, secretariat, conduct of business, voting, languages, amendments, and the overriding authority of the Convention.

By the beginning of the second week, agreement had been reached in the small contact group on all but six issues. These included: observer status for the financial mechanism referred to in Article 21 of the Convention; the size of the bureau; decision-making either by consensus or by a two-thirds majority; and reduction of the number of working languages from six to three. Further informal negotiations undertaken by the Chair also proved unsuccessful. The breakthrough finally came on Thursday, 30 June 1994, when some delegations relented. A lot of progress on this issue was made due to the realization that the COP would be unable to conduct any business without rules of procedure. Three unresolved issues were left bracketed for the COP to address at its first meeting. These issues are:

  • RULE 4 -- DATES OF MEETINGS: This rule stipulates the guidelines for the holding of ordinary and extraordinary meetings. Germany proposed text providing for the ordinary meetings to initially be held during the first three years, with the periodicity of subsequent meetings to be decided by the COP at the end of the third annual ordinary meeting.
  • RULE 21 -- OFFICERS: The small island developing States proposed that the size of the Bureau should be increased to assure their representation. At the informal extended bureau consultations on this issue, there appeared to be some goodwill to accept a proposal to have the Bureau enlarged from five (President, Rapporteur and three Vice-Presidents) to ten, with two representatives from each region. They also included an additional phrase, "...including a representative from the small islands developing States...." Since the European Union could not get approval for these amendments from its capitals in time, the text is still bracketed.
  • RULE 40 -- VOTING: This rule stipulates that all agreement on matters of substance will be reached by consensus. In case of failure to reach consensus, a two-thirds majority vote of the Parties present and voting will be the decisive factor. However, there is still some opposition on the application of these rules to decisions relating to paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 40 (financial mechanism) and the protocol on biosafety referred to in Article 19. This will not be resolved until the outstanding issues relating to the financial mechanism are addressed.
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