The First Meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) to Review and Assess Measures to Address the Global Issue of Mercury convened for its final day on Friday, 16 November at the United Nations Conference Center in Bangkok, Thailand.

During the morning plenary, delegates heard a report from the contact group on intersessional work that met from Thursday evening to the early hours of Friday morning. Belarus introduced a revised conference room paper on intersessional work of the Secretariat. She explained that the paper requested the Secretariat to undertake intersessional work in seven areas, inter alia: providing information on financial considerations of a free-standing convention, a new protocol to the Stockholm Convention and voluntary measures; providing information on  the ways in which  sustainable technology transfer and support could be facilitated for global mercury control actions; analysis of implementation options; organization of response measures; analysis of costs and benefits for each of the strategic objectives; analysis on meeting demand of mercury if primary production is phased out; preparation of a paper on major mercury containing products and processes with effective substitutes; and providing  information on funding available through the Global Environment Facility and the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management. After a brief exchange of views delegates agreed to the intersessional work.

In the late morning, the Secretariat announced the second meeting of the OEWG was scheduled to take place from 6 to 10 October, 2008 in Nairobi, Kenya.

During the afternoon plenary, delegates considered the report of the meeting (UNEP(DTIE)/Hg/OEWG.1/L.1). The report was discussed paragraph by paragraph and delegates adopted the report with some amendments.

Chair Roberts gaveled the meeting to a close at 4:54pm.

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