Bamako Convention on the Ban of the Import into Africa and the Control of Transboundary Movement and Management of Hazardous Wastes within Africa

The Bamako Convention was adopted at Bamako, Mali on 30 January 1991 by twelve nations of the then Organization of African Unity, now the African Union, and entered into force on 22 April 1998. It is not a regional restatement of the Basel Convention. It is Africa's own answer to what African states saw as Basel's failure. The Convention's Secretariat states the origin plainly: it arose from the failure of the Basel Convention to prohibit trade of hazardous waste to less developed countries, and from the realization that many developed nations were exporting toxic wastes to Africa. The negotiation was a direct response to specific documented incidents of toxic-waste dumping in African countries during the 1980s. Holding Bamako beside Basel in this bank, the global compromise treaty and the regional treaty written because that compromise was not trusted, is more honest than holding only the first. Where Basel regulates and permits hazardous-waste trade under conditions of prior informed consent, Bamako imposes a flat ban. The import into Africa of any hazardous or radioactive waste is prohibited outright, so parties do not get to consent their way into becoming a dumping ground. Dumping and incineration at sea and in inland waters are banned as well, which closes the routes around a simple import prohibition. The precautionary principle is written directly into the treaty text, so uncertainty about whether a substance is harmful is not treated as licence to import or dispose of it. The ban on imports is paired with obligations for the environmentally sound management of hazardous waste already generated inside African states, so the Convention addresses the waste the continent produces as well as the waste sent to it. It stands as one of the clearest cases in this bank of a regional bloc writing its own binding law because a global instrument did not go far enough to protect it. The complete text is published by the Bamako Convention Secretariat and in the African Union treaty repository.