22-24 Apr 2024 Santiago, Chile | Conferences and meetings of subsidiary bodies
The President of the Republic of Chile, Gabriel Boric, will preside over the inauguration of the third meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 3) to the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean – known as the Escazú Agreement – tomorrow Monday, 22 April, at ECLAC’s central headquarters in Santiago, Chile.
The event, that will extend until April 24, will gather authorities from the region’s countries, representatives of regional and international organizations and members of the public, who will consider and approve 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. Reports from the Secretariat, Presiding Officers and the Committee to Support Implementation and Compliance will also be presented, along with national implementation road maps, and any other matter that the Parties decide upon will be discussed.
The opening session of the COP 3 of the Escazú Agreement will take place in person at 12 p.m. local time in Chile (GMT -4) at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean’s (ECLAC) Raúl Prebisch Conference Room. Besides President Gabriel Boric, it will also include Javier Medina Vásquez, Deputy Executive Secretary of ECLAC, which is the United Nations regional organization that serves as Secretariat of the Agreement; Marcelo Cousillas, Director of Legal Affairs at Uruguay’s Environment Ministry and Chair of the Presiding Officers of the Agreement; and elected representative of the public Nicole Leotaud, from Trinidad and Tobago.
The meeting will also be transmitted online in full via https://live.cepal.org/escazu.
We invite journalists and other members of the press who want to attend this event in person to register using this form: https://eventos.cepal.org/event/142/. They will receive an automated email confirmation once their registration has been accepted.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Submitting the registration form is a prerequisite for attending the meeting in person, but it does NOT guarantee access to the event. Local organizers can restrict entry, if need be, due to attendance capacity restrictions or for security or other reasons arising at the time. We thank you in advance for your understanding and respect for these conditions.
In the framework of the COP 3, from April 22 to April 26, 2024, other related special sessions and meetings will take place that will celebrate International Mother Earth Day and will address distinct topics such as producing environmental information, public participation in environmental impact assessment, access to justice, and mainstreaming the gender perspective in implementation of the Escazú Agreement. In addition, the fourth meeting of the Committee to Support Implementation and Compliance will be held, along with around 30 virtual side events.
Thus far, the Escazú Agreement has been signed by 24 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean and features 15 States Parties: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Grenada, Guyana, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 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 can proceed to deposit their instruments of ratification at any time at the United Nations central headquarters in New York. The countries that did not sign it within the first stipulated time frame (between September 27, 2018 and September 26, 2020) can become Parties through accession (a one-step procedure that necessitates no signature). The instruments of accession have the same legal requirements and effects as ratification.
The full programme of the COP 3 of the Escazú Agreement is available on the meeting’s special website: https://acuerdodeescazu.cepal.org/cop3/en
We kindly insist that journalists and other members of the press who want to cover this event in person are requested to register exclusively using this form: https://eventos.cepal.org/event/142/
IMPORTANT: Registration for participants (authorities, official delegations, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, representatives of civil society, etc.) is separate from press registration and is already closed. For questions regarding this matter, please write to secretaria.escazu@cepal.org.
The event’s official activities can be followed live online via the meeting’s website, ECLAC’s official website www.cepal.org, the webpage https://live.cepal.org/escazu and the Commission’s institutional accounts on X (formerly Twitter https://twitter.com/cepal_onu) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/cepal.onu).
What: 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’s headquarters in Santiago, Chile.
Who:
Inauguration (Monday, April 22, 12 p.m. local time in Chile):
- Gabriel Boric, President of the Republic of Chile.
- Javier Medina Vásquez, ECLAC’s Deputy Executive Secretary.
- Marcelo Cousillas, Director of Legal Affairs at Uruguay’s Environment Ministry and Chair of the Presiding Officers of the Agreement.
- Nicole Leotaud, elected representative of the public, from Trinidad and Tobago.
Virtual connection via various platforms:
- Meeting website: https://acuerdodeescazu.cepal.org/cop3/en
- ECLAC’s website: www.cepal.org
- Live streaming https://live.cepal.org/escazu
- Official account on X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/cepal_onu
- Official account on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cepal.onu
For queries related to journalistic coverage of this event, contact ECLAC’s Public Information Unit in Santiago, Chile. Email: prensa@cepal.org; Telephone: +562 2210 2040.
