Background
The issue of liability and redress for damage arising from GMOs under the Biosafety Protocol is on-going work. Article 27 of the Biosafety Protocol stipulates that the 1st Meeting of the Parties shall adopt a process to elaborate “international rules and procedures in the field of liability and redress for damage resulting from transboundary movements of living modified organisms.and shall endeavour to complete this process within four years.”
The 1st Meeting of the Parties in Kuala Lumpur in February 2004, established an Open-ended Ad Hoc Working Group of Legal and Technical Experts on Liability and Redress and adopted the terms of reference for the Working Group, as well as an indicative work plan. The Working Group is supposed to meet 5 times to negotiate a liability and redress regime, and is scheduled to complete this work by 2007, in order for the following Meeting of the Parties to complete the process by adopting the liability and redress regime within the mandate of four years (2008).
The 1st meeting of the Working Group was held in May 2005 in Montreal. The meeting elaborated on the different options, approaches and issues. The report from the meeting contains an annex listing the various options, approaches, issues, scenarios and possible elements.
The 1st meeting of the Working Group invited Parties, other governments, relevant international organizations and stakeholders to submit views, in particular with respect to approaches, options and issues in the annex to the report, preferably in the form of proposals for text, no later than 3 months before the 2nd meeting of the Working Group.
The 2nd meeting of the Working Group is scheduled to take place from 20-24 February 2006 in Montreal. Accordingly, the CBD Secretariat requested for views to be submitted no later than 1 November 2005.
In order to move the process forward, the Co-Chairs of the Working Group, with the assistance of the CBD Secretariat will synthesise the proposed text that is submitted, and produce a working draft for consideration by the 2nd meeting of the Working Group. It is expected that the working draft produced by the Co-Chairs will form the basis of the text that will be negotiated in the Working Group meetings.