Rotterdam Convention: Pursuant to Article 4 of the Rotterdam Convention, each Party is required to designate one or more national authorities that shall be authorized to act on its behalf in the performance of the administrative functions required by the Convention. The Secretariat also communicates with an Official Contact Point (OCP) of a Party on official issues. Here too, the COP has adopted a standard form for notification of designation of contacts (decision RC-6/13), which Parties are requested to use to transmit information to the Secretariat. A contacts database is available on the Rotterdam Convention website.

Article 10 of the Convention sets out the obligations of Parties with respect to the future import of chemicals listed in Annex III. Parties have an ongoing obligation to submit to the Secretariat, as soon as possible and in any event no later than nine months after the date of dispatch of a decision guidance document, their import response2 (whether a final or interim response) concerning the future import of the chemical. If a Party modifies its response, it has an obligation to immediately submit the revised response to the Secretariat.

Article 14 in addition to other relevant Articles gives the mandate to the Secretariat to facilitate the information exchange. The Secretariat maintains various databases of information on the Convention website based on transmissions from Parties e.g. country profiles, database of import responses, national legislation collection. For the Rotterdam Conventions the units of measurements are the transmission of information, such as the number of country contacts designated, number of national reports, national implementation plans and import responses. For each Party, a percentage value is assigned to indicate how much of the required information has been submitted.

Import responses under the Rotterdam Convention are the decisions provided by Parties indicating whether or not they will consent to import the chemicals listed in Annex III of the Convention and subject to the prior informed consent (PIC) procedure. Article 10 of the Rotterdam Convention sets out the obligations of Parties with respect to the future import of chemicals listed in Annex III.