The United Nations Cocoa Conference, 2000, opens in Geneva on 13 November. The main purpose of the ten-day Conference is to bring producers and consumers together to discuss the preparation of a successor agreement to the International Cocoa Agreement, 1993. The existing Agreement, despite being adopted in 1993, never definitively entered into force as the deadline for ratification was not met.
The United Nations Conference on Cacao 2000, will have before it the draft for a new international agreement (TD/COCOA.9/R.1) prepared by the International Cocoa Council, following the preparatory committee meeting in London on 4-8 September 2000.
The International Cocoa Council has prepared a comprehensive negotiating text for a new agreement, which incorporates the proposals of producers and consumers. Among them are such ideas as the enhancement of market transparency by collecting, processing and distributing data from both private and public sources, and increased cooperation between the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) and the private sector.
