The Second Meeting of the BCH-IAC

Second Meeting of the BCH-IAC Concluded Successfully

The Informal Advisory Committee of the Biosafety Clearing-House (BCH-IAC) met in Geneva on 23 and 24 November to provide technical advice to the Executive Secretary on the ongoing development of the Biosafety Clearing-House (BCH). The BCH Central Portal is available at http://bch.biodiv.org.

Under the Chairmanship of Darja Stanic Racman (Slovenia), the Committee considered the following issues in depth: management of information at national level; design of the Central Portal; capacity-building; partnership arrangements; compliance issues; interoperability mechanisms; and the multi-year programme of work. The meeting also benefited from several presentations to assist the participants in their deliberation of the agenda, including presentations from the Secretariat on the status of implementation of the Biosafety Clearing-House, progress of the Multi-Year Programme of Work, and technical issues; presentations on national experiences from the members from Colombia, Mexico, Canada, and Uzbekistan; presentations on partnership experiences with the Biosafety Clearing‑House from ICGEB; and presentations on capacity-building activities being undertaken by UNEP/GEF, Canada and the Biosafety Interdisciplinary Network.

Recognizing that some improvements might still be needed in the evolution of the Central Portal, and the ongoing need for capacity-building, the Committee considered that current options available for making information available to the Biosafety Clearing-House are sufficient and effective to allow most of the Parties to fulfill their obligations to provide information to the Biosafety Clearing-House. Comments and recommendations were submitted to the Executive Secretary on each of the main issues identified by the Committee; the full report will be available shortly.

Experts are appointed to the Committee on the basis of their individual expertise, and membership is determined for each meeting taking into account the issues being considered, as well as regional and gender balance.

Photos taken during the meeting



Meeting deliberations

Meeting deliberations

BCH-IAC members

The following experts participated in the meeting:

  • Francisca Acevedo Gasman (Mexico)
  • Marcus Ballinger (Canada)
  • Regla Maria Diaz Jimenez (Cuba)
  • Mary Fosi Mbantenku (Cameroon)
  • Julian Jaftha (South Africa)
  • Martha Kandawa-Schultz (Namibia)
  • Boris Korotkov (Uzbekistan)
  • Pati Lui (Samoa)
  • Antonia Rana (European Commission)
  • Emma Lucia Rivera (Colombia)
  • Albert Spielmann (Switzerland)
  • Darja Stanic Racman (Slovenia; Chair)
  • Yangping Zheng (China)
  • Jyoti Mathur-Filipp (UNEP-GEF)
  • Dario Palmisano (International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, ICGEB)
  • Li Lin Lim (Third World Network)
  • Esmeralda Prat (Global Industry Coalition)
  • Andras November (Biosafety Interdisciplinary Network)
  • Kirsty Galloway McLean (SCBD)
  • Philippe Leblond (SCBD)