The Prior Informed Consent (PIC) regions are used only for the determination of requirements given in paragraph 5 of Article 5 of the Convention, which states:
"When the Secretariat has received at least one notification from each of two Prior Informed Consent regions regarding a particular chemical that it has verified meets the requirements of Annex I, it shall forward them to the Chemical Review Committee."
The listing of countries in the PIC Regions was adopted by the Conference of the Parties at its first meeting, in decision RC 1/2, only for the purposes of paragraph 5 of Article 5 of the Convention.