National governments, with funding provided by the GEF and technical assistance provided by GEF implementing agencies, will over the next few years be implementing Minamata Initial Assessments (MIAs) Enabling Activities (EAs) that aim to strengthen national decision-making toward ratification of the Minamata Convention on Mercury and build national capacity towards implementation of future obligations.

In order to support Government partners, national stakeholders, national and international experts and consultants in preparing a Minamata Initial Assessment (MIA) report that contains all the required components, UNDP, in partnership with UNITAR and with review provided by the Inter-Organization Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals (IOMC) agencies and the Interim secretariat of the Minamata Convention, has prepared a first draft for the outline of a MIA Report. It is hoped that a standardized approach for preparing a MIA Report will allow countries to be able to more easily compare their results and approaches, and learn from others’ experiences.