Among the decisions made at COP-5, Parties defined new dates to phase out mercury-added products including cosmetics, strengthened ties with Indigenous Peoples, advanced the first effectiveness evaluation of the Convention, and reached an agreement on a threshold for mercury waste. Read more on Minamata Convention website

It is October 2013, and Rimiko Yoshinaga is standing behind a podium in Minamata, Japan, gazing at an auditorium packed with world leaders. Silence descends upon the room as she begins recounting how a mysterious illness had killed her father decades earlier.   Yoshinaga would learn her father was one of thousands of Minamata-area residents poisoned in the 1950s and 1960s by industrial runoff laced with mercury, a neurotoxin.

By 2020 the manufacture, import and export of mercury-added products is no longer allowed Parties agreed on a framework to monitor the effectiveness of the Convention in order to strengthen its implementation The Third meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury took place from 25 to 29 November in Geneva, Switzerland

Mercury—a toxic heavy metal that can cause serious and lasting health problems—turns up in many places that you wouldn’t expect. It has now been more than two years since the entry into force of the Minamata Convention, a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury. But the production of many mercury-containing products continues around the globe.