A/HRC/12/26 page 14 shipbreaking, are set out in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in other international human rights treaties, most of which have been ratified, or acceded to, by the major shipbreaking countries. 1. Basel Convention 39. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal represents the main legal framework for the protection of human health and the environment against the adverse effects resulting from the generation, management, transboundary movements and disposal of hazardous and other wastes. The Convention, which was adopted in 1989 and entered into force in 1992, has been ratified by 172 States, including the main shipbreaking countries. 40. The Convention rests on two main pillars: (a) First, it establishes a “prior informed consent” (PIC) procedure for the transboundary movements of wastes between parties (arts. 4.1 and 6), according to which the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes or other wastes can take place only upon prior written notification to the competent authorities of the States of export, import and transit, and upon consent of these authorities to the movement of the wastes in question. The notification procedure is meant to ensure that the States concerned can make an informed decision on whether to authorize a transboundary movement. Shipments to and from non-parties are illegal unless there is a special agreement (arts. 4.5 and 11.1); (b) Secondly, the Convention lays down the principle of “environmentally sound management” (ESM), which requires the adoption of all practicable steps to ensure that hazardous wastes or other wastes are managed in a manner which will protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects which may result from such wastes (art. 2.8). To this end, parties are expected to prevent or minimize the generation of wastes at source, to treat and dispose of wastes as close as possible to their place of generation and to minimize the quantities that are moved across borders (art. 4.2). Strong controls have to be applied from the moment of generation of a hazardous waste to its storage, transport, treatment, reuse, recycling, recovery and final disposal. 41. The ship-dismantling issue has appeared on the agenda of the Basel Convention since the late 1990s, when cases concerning the dismantling of ships in some developing countries were brought to the attention of the Secretariat. It was generally recognized at the time that since the Basel Convention had not been created with the ship-dismantling issue in mind, there were some practical and legal uncertainties with regard to the its application to ships moved for recycling. These uncertainties persist today. The first consists in the identification of the competent authority of export (the flag State or the port State?), and how the competent authorities’ responsibilities might be undertaken within the system of flag or port State control. Another difficulty concerns whether a ship can be classified as a waste, and at which time it can be defined as waste. In this regard, the seventh Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention noted that “a ship may become a waste as defined in article 2 of the Basel Convention and that at