Two UN organisations urged developing countries on Wednesday to do more to protect up to five million farm workers who are believed to be poisoned each year by chemical pesticides.
"An estimated one to five million cases of pesticide poisoning occur every year, resulting in several thousand fatalities among agricultural workers," the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a joint statement.
"Most of these poisonings occur in the developing world where safe health standards can be inadequate or non-existent," they said.
"Although these countries use only 25 percent of global pesticide production, they account for a staggering 99 percent of the related deaths."
The organisations acknowledged that "there is no other option but using substantial quantities of pesticides" in the FAO-sponsored fight against the massive plague of desert locusts currently devastating wide areas of West Africa.
But they said the FAO "takes all measures to provide farm workers and others involved in the campaign with adequate protection."
Elsewhere in developing countries, farmers and their families were vulnerable because they often lacked proper protective clothing and equipment to handle pesticides, the statement said.
"In many countries, children may have to help out on family-owned farms where pesticides are used, or they may be obliged to transport goods treated with pesticides for local businesses," it added.
The statement was issued while government officials were meeting in Geneva to consider additions to a list of hazardous products subject to import restrictions.
The list was drawn up under the 1998 Rotterdam Convention which requires exporters to obtain "prior informed consent" from potential importers before supplying them with dangerous pesticides and chemicals.
The restriction already applied to 22 pesticides including DDT as well as to five industrial chemicals before the officials added 14 products on Monday.
The Convention enables governments "to ensure that only those pesticides that they can safely manage enter the country and that pesticides which are not appropriate to local conditions and technologies are excluded," FAO Assistant Director-General Louise Fresco said. To date, it has been signed by 74 countries.