Notification 2006-101

Dear Madam/Sir, As you know, the Secretariat is continuing its efforts to facilitate improved access to and use of the Biosafety Clearing-House (BCH). Pursuant to Decision BS-III/2 of the third meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Protocol (COP-MOP) on information-sharing, and in accordance with the multi-year programme of work for the BCH adopted at COP-MOP-2, I am delighted to announce a number of new features accessible through the Central Portal of the Biosafety Clearing-House (http://bch.biodiv.org/), which complement the recently released Registry of Living Modified Organisms. Some of the additional new features include: • A new section on information-sharing, which provides improved access to the Biosafety Information Resource Centre, the recently released directory of biosafety organizations, and a database of country profiles which provides at-a-glance summary information of information registered by each country in the BCH; • A new facility to undertake ‘global’ decision searching, i.e. search all types of decision and declaration at once, and information about registering field trials not covered by the Advance Informed Agreement procedure; • Expanded help features, including new explanations and search hints, the ability to search the entire BCH Central Portal as well as national websites that have been registered with the BCH, and access to the training modules developed under the UNEP-GEF capacity-building project on the BCH; • A new section on reporting, which provides improved access to annual reports on the operation of the BCH, annual reports on the operation of the Roster of Experts, and interim national reports under the Biosafety Protocol; • New search features and instructions for using the BCH multilingual thesaurus and controlled vocabulary; and • Updated common formats for reporting information to the BCH. Links to each of these new features are available through the BCH news page at http://bch.biodiv.org/news/news.shtml. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many governments and organizations that have been making their information available through the BCH. I encourage you to send any feedback and suggestions for improvement of the Biosafety Clearing-House to the Secretariat through bch@biodiv.org, or to contact Kirsty Galloway McLean directly (tel: +1 514 287-7039). Please accept, Madam/Sir, the assurances of my highest consideration.

Executive Secretary

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