Third meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Escazú Agreement will be held at the ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, Chile

The Third meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 3) of the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean -known as Escazú Agreement– will be held from April 22 to 24 at the ECLAC headquarters, in Santiago, Chile.

Its main objective will be the consideration and approval of the Action Plan on Human Rights Defenders in Environmental Matters, prepared in a participatory process under the leadership of the ad hoc Working Group coordinated by Chile, Ecuador and Saint Kitts and Nevis. Likewise, reports from the Secretariat, Board of Directors, Implementation and Compliance Support Committee and roadmaps for national implementation will be presented, and any other matter that the Parties decide will be discussed.

The meeting will be held in person at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). In addition, it will be transmitted entirely over the Internet through https://live.cepal.org/escazu.

It will be inaugurated on Monday, April 22 at 12:00 pm Chile (GMT -4) by Gabriel Boric, President of the Republic of Chile; José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of ECLAC – the regional organization of the United Nations that acts as the Secretariat of the Agreement; Marcelo Cousillas, Director of the Legal Area, Ministry of the Environment of Uruguay and President of the Board of Directors of the Agreement; and the elected representative of the public Nicole Leotaud, from Trinidad and Tobago.

Additionally, between April 22 and 26, 2024, other special sessions and related meetings will take place that will celebrate International Mother Earth Day and address different aspects of environmental information generation, public participation in environmental assessment processes, access to justice and mainstreaming of the gender perspective in the implementation of the Escazú Agreement, among others, and the Fourth session of the Implementation and Compliance Support Committee will be held. Likewise, around 30 parallel virtual events will be held.

To date, the Escazú Agreement has been signed by 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and has 15 States Parties. The latter are: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Grenada, Guyana, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Uruguay.

The Agreement was adopted in Escazú, Costa Rica, on March 4, 2018 and entered into force on April 22, 2021. The 24 countries that have signed it may proceed to deposit their instruments of ratification at any time at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York. Countries that did not sign it within the first stipulated period (between September 27, 2018 and September 26, 2020) can become Parties through accession (single-step procedure without the need for signature). Instruments of accession have the same requirements and legal effects as ratification.

The complete program of COP 3 of the Escazú Agreement is available on the special website of the meeting: https://agradodeescazu.cepal.org/cop3/es

Journalists and press representatives who wish to cover the event in person are requested to register in this form: https://eventos.cepal.org/event/142/

Registration for participants (authorities, official delegations, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, representatives of civil society, etc.) is independent of press registration and is also available on the event website.

The official activities of the event can be followed virtually live through the meeting website, the official ECLAC internet portal www.cepal.org, the page https://live.cepal.org/escazu and the institutional accounts on X (formerly Twitter https://twitter.com/cepal_onu) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/cepal.onu).

That: Third meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Escazú Agreement (COP 3).

When: Monday April 22 to Wednesday April 24, 2024.

Where: ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, Chile.

Who is it:

Inauguration (Monday, April 22, 12:00 Chilean hrs):

• Gabriel Boric, President of the Republic of Chile.
• José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of ECLAC.
• Marcelo Cousillas, Director of the Legal Area, Ministry of the Environment of Uruguay and President of the Board of Directors of the Agreement
• Nicole Leotaud, Elected Representative of the Public, Trinidad and Tobago.

Via virtual connection through various platforms:

For questions related to journalistic coverage of the event, contact the Public Information Unit of ECLAC, in Santiago, Chile. Email: [email protected]; telephone: (56) 22210 2040.