A new specialized legal database on CITES?
CITES-LEX: a proposal to strengthen the knowledge about CITES implementing legislation and facilitate the making of Legal Acquisition Findings
Panama City, 22 November 2022
The CITES CoP Side Event “30 Years of the CITES National Legislation Project (NLP): Celebrating successes and progresses since CoP8” was a high-level event, at which Ms Ivonne Higuero, CITES Secretary-General, described the NLP as “a vital channel for the Secretariat to provide direct support to CITES authorities, legislators, prosecutors and judges”.
At the event, the Development Law Service (LEGN) and the CITES Secretariat presented a joint proposal for a new legal database on CITES implementing legislation and how this can facilitate the process of making Legal Acquisition Findings (LAFs). LEGN provided an overview of its flagship FAOLEX database, and, based on its experience with several other sub-set databases it has developed and operates, stressed how a new ‘CITES-LEX’ would support CITES Parties to further their implementation of Resolution Conf. 8.4 (Rev. CoP15), and Resolution Conf. 18.7 on LAFs, as well as contribute further to the Guidance for Making LAFs. Ms Rachel Gaughan, from the CITES Secretariat, underlined two main potentialities of a CITES-LEX, being: i) enrichment of the legal information in the Catalogue of National Legislation relevant to the implementation of CITES, and (ii) the potential to use CITES-LEX to develop an Assessment Tool to support LAFs, to collect information from Parties on their processes of making LAFs, and make this information available through a Global Record of Discerned LAF requirements for sharing of experiences and good practices.
The event also saw presentations from Ms Ruth Morcillo, Prosecutor of Panama, and Ms Andrea Brusco, Environmental Governance Regional Coordinator at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Regional Office in Panama. Mr Juan Carlos Vásquez, Chief of the Legal Unit at the CITES Secretariat, reiterated the Secretariat’s support to the ongoing work of developing CITES-LEX, “a possible new tool in the NLP’s belt”, and distributed certificates to LEGN and other partners who have been contributing to the successes and progresses of the 30 Years of the CITES National Legislation Project.
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