The fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury (COP-4) ( Virtual, 01 Nov 2021 – 05 Nov 2021 )

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic situation, the Bureau of the Fourth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury decided, at its fifth meeting held on 14 April 2021, to organize COP-4 in two segments: a first segment to be conducted online within the period of 1 to 5 November 2021 and a second segment to be conducted in-person in the first quarter of 2022 in Bali, Indonesia.

Read the full communication on the update on the format from COP4 President Rosa Vivien Ratnawati and Executive Secretary Monika Stankiewicz: official letter and tentative schedule here.

The COP-4 bureau agreed that the regional preparatory meetings for the online segment of COP4 would be held online. The list of dates and further details can be found here.

An open call for proposals for official side events opened on Monday, 13 September 2021, and will close on Wednesday, 06 October 2021. More details and the application forms can be found here.

During COP-3, the Conference of the Parties elected Rosa Vivien Ratnawati (Indonesia) as the President of COP-4. Rosa Vivien Ratnawati is the Director-General for Solid Waste, Hazardous Waste, and Hazardous Substances Management at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of the Republic of Indonesia. Since 2018, she has actively participated in all the meetings and negotiations at the BRS (Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm) Conventions and the Minamata Convention on Mercury. In November 2019, she was appointed as the President of the COP-4 Minamata Convention on Mercury. You can read her full biography here.

Information for Participants

Pre-registration for the Minamata COP-4 online segment, including submission of the required documentation, should be completed by Friday, 1 October 2021.

Registration platform

Focal points from governments and accredited organizations have received an e-mail containing an exclusive link, through which they can pre-register their delegation in the online system.

They must assign the role for each delegate, as appropriate and as outlined in the invitation letter.

Please make sure to send the official letter of nomination to complete the online registration, addressed to the Executive Secretary, by e-mail as a scanned attachment to: MEA-MinamataMeetings@un.org.

Once the Secretariat receives the official letter, the pre-registered participant(s) will be validated. Designated speakers and viewers will receive their respective login credentials a few days before the start of the meeting.

The platform used for online participants’ registration and management (Kronos) was developed by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This system is also used by other Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) like CITES and the Ozone Secretariat.

For a step-by-step information on the registration process please check the Online Registration User Guide.

Meeting Platform

The plenary sessions of the online segment of COP-4 will take place on the Interprefy platform. To ensure that the platform functions well during the plenary sessions, all delegations and accredited organizations will be required to identify one spokesperson who may take the floor, while other representatives will be directed to participate in the meeting through the live stream link.

Parties and governments

An official nomination letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or a note verbal from the Permanent Mission of the party to the United Nations Office at Geneva will be required for pre-registration. Please send pre-registration documents to MEA-MinamataMeetings@un.org.

Nominations can be submitted specifically for participation in the online segment of COP-4. Alternatively, they can be submitted for participation in both the online and the in-person segments of the meeting. Once the Conference of the Parties has agreed on the dates of the in-person segment, an invitation letter specific to the in-person segment will be sent. Parties will then be able to nominate representatives to the in-person segment, or to submit updated nominations for the in-person segment as needed if nominations were previously sent for both segments.