International Conference on Chemical Safety in Yerevan, Armenia
WECF’s member organisation AWHHE, Armenian Women for Health and a Healthy Environment, organised end of October an international conference on Chemical Safety. The conference was well attended by national government representatives, international agencies based in Yerevan and national and international experts and NGO’s .
01.11.2007 |Chantal van den Bossche
Villages below burial in Armenia
International
Conference on Chemical Safety.
WECF’s
member organisation AWHHE, Armenian Women for Health and a Healthy Environment,
organised end of October an
international conference on Chemical Safety. The conference was well attended
by national government representatives, international agencies based in Yerevan
and national and international experts and NGO’s .
This was the first meeting in Armenia that brought these representatives together to discuss chemical safety problems and related human health and environment issues. The aim was to address gaps in national policies and build partnerships to find solutions.
Hot
topic: Obsolete Pesticides Burial on a
landslide.
WECF was
one of the co- organizers of the conference. The president of WECF, Marie
Kranendonk, had been invited to address the international experience in solving
serious problems of obsolete
pesticides dumps, such as the one close to the Armenian capital Yerevan. AWHHE
has been drawing attention to this dangerous burial site for many years.
Marie Kranendonk presented the example of a clean –up of obsolete pesticide storages in Moldova. She explained that the Moldavian Government had made the clean up of obsolete pesticide storages a priority in their national action plan to comply with the Stockholm convention. At their request several international agencies stepped in with technical and financial aid to help Moldova with the complicated work: safe removal, packaging and transport to a French chemicals incinerator. Moldavian NGO’s, supported by a Dutch NGO and with Dutch Government funding, had participated in the clean up.
Marie Kranendonk then showed the serious case of the Armenian pesticide burial, which is situated in a landslide area. AWHHE had been doing research and awareness raising about this dump for several years and experts had measured that the dump of 500 tons was slowly moving down to the valley where three villages are situated. AWHHE had been filming the situation and interviewed the villagers and the case had a lot of publicity. Although the clean up of this dump will be a complex task, there is certainly an emergency. WECF’s president expressed hope that the Armenian government wants to make this burial a priority, she asked the international agencies to organize an aid programmed to help Armenia solve this problem.
After the conference participants went to the burial site. Photographs of the landslide cracks were taken. Interviews on TV followed and meetings with international agencies OSCE and UNDP . The photo’s and case were presented at a World bank/GEF conference in Washington by John Vijgen, an expert who collaborates with AWHHE and WECF. AWHHE has been invited to participate in an emergency commission of the Armenian Government to study possible solutions to the burial problem.. AWHHE and WECF will continue to advocate for urgent action. And international aid.
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