Editing CITES (section)

==Meetings==
The Conference of the Parties (CoP) is held once every three years. The location of the next CoP is chosen at the close of each CoP by a secret ballot vote.

The CITES Committees (Animals Committee, Plants Committee and Standing Committee) hold meetings during each year that does not have a CoP, while the Standing committee meets also in years with a CoP.  The Committee meetings take place in Geneva, Switzerland (where the Secretariat of the CITES Convention is located), unless another country offers to host the meeting. The Secretariat is administered by [[UNEP]]. The Animals and Plants Committees have sometimes held joint meetings.  The previous joint meeting was held in March 2012 in [[Dublin]], [[Republic of Ireland|Ireland]], and the latest one was held in [[Veracruz (city)|Veracruz]], [[Mexico]], in May 2014.

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
|-
!scope="col" rowspan=1 width=90|Meeting
!scope="col" colspan=1 width=110|City
!scope="col" rowspan=1 width=120|Country
!scope="col" rowspan=1 width=200|Duration
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 1
|[[Bern]]
|{{flag|Switzerland}}
| 2–6 November 1976
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 2
|[[San José, Costa Rica|San José]]
|{{flag|Costa Rica}}
| 19–30 March 1979
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 3
|[[New Delhi]]
|{{flag|India}}
| 25 February – 8 March 1981
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 4
|[[Gaborone]]
|{{flag|Botswana}}
| 19–30 April 1983
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 5
|[[Buenos Aires]]
|{{flag|Argentina}}
| 22 April – 3 May 1985
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 6
|[[Ottawa]]
|{{flag|Canada}}
| 12–24 July 1987
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 7
|[[Lausanne]]
|{{flag|Switzerland}}
| 9–20 October 1989
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 8
|[[Kyoto]]
|{{flag|Japan}}
| 2–13 March 1992
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 9
|[[Fort Lauderdale, Florida|Fort Lauderdale]]
|{{flag|United States}}
| 7–18 November 1994
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 10
|[[Harare]]
|{{flag|Zimbabwe}}
| 9–20 June 1997
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 11
|[[Nairobi]]
|{{flag|Kenya}}
| 10–20 April 2000
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 12
|[[Santiago|Santiago de Chile]]
|{{flag|Chile}}
| 3–15 November 2002
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 13
|[[Bangkok]]
|{{flag|Thailand}}
| 2–14 October 2004
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 14
|[[The Hague]]
|{{flag|Netherlands}}
| 3–15 June 2007
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 15
|[[Doha]]
|{{flag|Qatar}}
| 13–25 March 2010
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 16
|[[Bangkok]]
|{{flag|Thailand}}
| 3–14 March 2013
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 17
|[[Johannesburg]]
|{{flag|South Africa}}
| 24 September – 5 October 2016
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 18
|[[Geneva]]
|{{flag|Switzerland}}
| 17–28 August 2019
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 19
|[[Panama City]]
|{{flag|Panama}}
| 14–25 November 2022
|-
!scope="row"|CoP 20
|[[Samarkand]]
|{{flag|Uzbekistan}}
|25 November – 6 December 2025
|}

A current list of upcoming meetings appears on the CITES calendar.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.cites.org/eng/news/calendar.php|title=CITES calendar|website=www.cites.org}}</ref>

At the seventeenth Conference of the Parties (CoP 17), Namibia and Zimbabwe introduced proposals to amend their listing of elephant populations in Appendix II. Instead, they wished to establish controlled trade in all elephant specimens, including ivory. They argue that revenue from regulated trade could be used for elephant conservation and rural communities' development. However, both proposals were opposed by the US and other countries.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Laina |first=Efstathia |date=2018-12-03 |title=Negotiations for Sustainable Oceans: Significant Challenges Ahead |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/epl-180086 |journal=Environmental Policy and Law |volume=48 |issue=5 |pages=262–268 |doi=10.3233/epl-180086 |s2cid=92311195 |issn=0378-777X|url-access=subscription }}</ref>