Basel Convention

Basel Convention

Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal
The logo of the Basel Convention Secretariat
Type	United Nations treaty
Signed	22 March 1989 (1989-03-22)[1]
Location	Basel, Switzerland[1]
Effective	5 May 1992[1]
Condition	Ninety days after the ratification by at least 20 signatory states[1]
Signatories	53[1]
Parties	191[1]
Depositary	Secretary-General of the United Nations
Languages	Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish
Full text
Basel Convention at Wikisource
basel.int

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The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, usually known as the Basel Convention, is an international treaty that was designed to reduce the movements of hazardous waste between nations, and specifically to restrict the transfer of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries.^[2] It does not address the movement of radioactive waste, controlled by the International Atomic Energy Agency.^[3] The Basel Convention is also intended to minimize the rate and toxicity of wastes generated, to ensure their environmentally sound management as closely as possible to the source of generation, and to assist developing countries in environmentally sound management of the hazardous and other wastes they generate.

The convention was opened for signature on 21 March 1989, and entered into force on 5 May 1992. As of June 2024, there are 191 parties to the convention. In addition, Haiti and the United States have signed the convention but did not ratify it.^[1][4]

Following a petition urging action on the issue signed by more than a million people around the world, most of the world's countries, but not the United States, agreed in May 2019 to an amendment of the Basel Convention to include plastic waste as regulated material.^[5][6] Although the United States is not a party to the treaty, export shipments of plastic waste from the United States are now "criminal traffic as soon as the ships get on the high seas," according to the Basel Action Network (BAN), and carriers of such shipments may face liability, because the transportation of plastic waste is prohibited in just about every other country.^[7]