Does/will the Interim Secretariat for the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants have the ability to employ staff in its own name?
Secretariat staff will be employed through the United Nations exclusively to service the Stockholm Convention. However, certain bodies of the Convention, e.g., regional centres established under paragraph 4 of Article 12 of the Convention, may be able to hire local staff directly. This ends our response to your questions. As mentioned before it is very important that the Stockholm Convention is granted the top level domain address of www.pops.int. It would serve as the official website for the Convention and would be easy for people to remember and find. Indeed, the status provided by the .int address will further encourage early ratification and implementation of the Convention by countries. This would benefit everyone who has a stake in this issue. That is everyone!
