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Geneva, 7 November 2025 - The sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury (COP-6), held in Geneva from 3 to 7 November 2025, brought together over 1,000 participants in person and nearly 4,000 online viewers. Parties adopted 22 decisions to advance the Convention’s objective of protecting human health and the environment from mercury pollution, marking a week of collaboration, determination, and shared purpose.
When Iya Kande’s youngest son turned two months old, she began using a skin-lightening soap on his face and body.
Kande, whose last name has been changed to protect her identity, lives in northern Nigeria. She was hoping a fairer complexion would ingratiate the boy with his grandmother, who like many in the region had come to equate light skin with beauty.
But within weeks, the child’s skin began to blister and break out in rashes. It wasn’t until months later that Kande learned the cause. The soap was laced with mercury.
At its 69th Council Meeting, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) approved a new work program that includes three major mercury-related projects across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Mexico has been making significant efforts to stop the industrial use of mercury in line with its obligations under the Minamata Convention. CYDSA, a Mexican chemical conglomerate, replaced the chlorine and caustic soda plant in Monterrey with a state-of-art mercury-free plant from 2013 to 2016. To convert the last remaining mercury-cell plant in Coatzacoalcos, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) approved a 12 million dollar project.
In the small coastal town of Guapi, Colombia, Mary Luz Ante Orobio is meeting with a group she calls “the unstoppable women.”
They are gathered around a wooden chest filled with loose cash, a ledger and a calculator. Orobio flips through the ledger, eyes poring over tidy notes outlining a series of financial investments. She jots down some numbers before distributing cash among the group.
The governments of Albania, Burkina Faso, India, Montenegro and Uganda have joined forces in a historic endeavour to tackle chemical pollution. Today marks a significant milestone as these nations unveil a US$ 134 million project to eliminate the use of mercury in medical devices.
Medical thermometers and sphygmomanometers (devices which measure blood pressure) are essential medical devices used widely in healthcare.
Albania, Burkina Faso, India, Montenegro and Uganda have joined forces to halt mercury pollution from the healthcare sector
Mercury harms human health and the environment
$134-million initiative will support a holistic approach to improve the management of mercury waste and the adoption of alternatives
Geneva, 14 May 2024 – The Governments of Albania, Burkina Faso, India, Montenegro and Uganda have united to combat chemical pollution today, launching a $134-million project to eliminate the use of mercury in medical devices.
As the sun rises across Mexico’s Sierra Gorda nature reserve, a golden light illuminates its nearly 400,000 hectares of mountains, gorges and valleys.
Set amid this vast wilderness is the Bucareli mercury mine.
Just after dawn, a metal door to the mine opens. The morning’s silence is broken by the dull sound of a generator and workers traipsing to their posts.
Among them is Jose Vigil, one of 800 people in the region who mine mercury, a highly toxic substance.
But for Vigil and the other miners, the clock is ticking.
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.
Senegal, Thailand and Uruguay have joined forces to reduce the environmental and health impacts of the dental industry
Mercury is a key component of dental amalgam, posing significant risks to human and environmental health when improperly handled and disposed of
$13-million initiative will support a holistic approach to accelerate the phase down of dental amalgam use and improve the disposal of mercury-containing waste
Strapped together by tape and frayed ropes, wooden logs demarcate the mineshaft’s entrance, a hole in the ground no larger than a metre square.
A young man nearby cranks a lever, kickstarting some generators. The steady hum of the machinery blends with the creaking of a pulley system, drowning out the sounds of the gentle breeze blowing through the mining site, located in Paracale, north Philippines.
The artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector accounts for 20 per cent of the world's annual gold production
New $60-million initiative will improve conditions for artisanal miners in Mongolia and the Philippines, while slashing harmful mercury emissions
As many as 15 million people work in the ASGM sector globally – including 4.5 million women and over 600,000 children
The ASGM sector is the single largest source of man-made mercury emissions, responsible for the release of as muc
The artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector accounts for 20 per cent of the world's annual gold production
The ASGM sector is the single largest source of man-made mercury emissions, responsible for the relea
Second meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury (COP2) is taking place from 19 to 23 November 2018 in Geneva, Switzerland
Rising mercury emissions place pressure on international community to scale up action to tackle mercury, according to upcoming report
15 million miners exposed to mercury through its use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining in over 70 countries
Geneva, 22 November 2018 – Almost 150 countries, 94 of them Parties to
Geneva, 02 October 2017 – In a landmark display of international cooperation, more than 160 countries committed to tackling one of the world's greatest chemical health threats at the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
The world's first environmental and health treaty in a decade saw many countries pledge political and financial support to help reduce and eliminate mercury, a heavy metal affecting the health of millions of people worldwide from Guyana and Kiribati, to Uganda and Japan.
The overall goal of the UNEP Global Mercury Partnership is to protect human health and the environment from the releases of mercury.