CITES Standing Committee meeting (SC69) in Geneva Switzerland

The TGA is currently attending the CITES Standing Committee meeting (SC69) in Geneva Switzerland

The True Green Alliance of South Africa (TGA) is a major founding member of the “Sustainable Use Coalition” (SUCO) (created during CITES CoP17 last year) and which is headed by a former Secretary General of CITES (1982 – 1990) Mr Eugene Lapointe.

Mr Lapointe is now President of the IWMC World Conservation Trust based in Switzerland.

Ron Thomson and Mrs Elma Britz – another Director of the TGA) is currently in Geneva, Switzerland, to participate in a CITES Standing Committee meeting (SC69) (27th November to 1st December) that has been convened to discuss and to adopt “A Code of Responsibility” for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOS) at Meetings of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wildlife Fauna and flora (CITES).

One of the main purposes of this “Code of Responsibility” is to put a stop to the “buying of votes” that has been a regular practice carried out, for the last 30 years to my personal knowledge, by those animal rightist NGOs who accredit themselves to every CITES meeting.

This initiative was started and has been negotiated by Mr Lapointe over the last 12 months. In this regard the TGA has been consulted all along the way.

This final meeting is preceded by three other meetings with the Standing Committee: one in Canada (2016); one in China (2017); and one (with the “alternate chair”) in Japan – which involved the major participation of extensive delegations from these governments. Mr Lapointe, alone, represented SUCO on all these occasions.

The proposal document was submitted by the government of St.Vincent and the Grenadines. As part of SUCO, Mrs Britz and I will be providing support to Mr. Lapointe (and SUCO) in this (SC69) presentation; and we will be participating wherever Mr Lapointe deems it appropriate that we do so.