The IPC develops a People-Centred Methodology for monitoring the SSF policies

In the summer of 2021, the members of the SSF-GSF Advisory Group  with the support of the IPC WG on Fisheries, decided to develop a methodology for assessing the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication; the main international UN instrument to protect and promote the rights of small-scale fisher people endorsed by the FAO Committee on Fisheries in 2014.

The SSF Guidelines are global in scope and local in their implementation. Yet, almost eight years after the endorsement of the guidelines, there is little empirical evidence of the actual implementation of the SSF Guidelines. At the same time, evidence supporting the views of the movements and pointing at the lack of implementation of the SSF Guidelines is unfortunately limited.

The IPC People-Centred Methodology is indeed a participatory process to gather qualitative information on the status of small-scale fisher people and raise awareness of the SSF Guidelines. It takes into consideration all the different cultural and social aspects of the small-scale fisher people that are usually overlooked by quantitative and technical methodologies. The methodology aims to assess into the communities and with the communities the progress of the SSF Guidelines implementation and examine small-scale fisher people’s human rights violations all over the world and to what extent the States are complying with and implementing the SSF Guidelines and the Guidelines’ core objectives. The assessment will serve to hold governments accountable to their voluntary commitments and it will provide the basis for ongoing advocacy at the national and regional level as well as internationally at the FAO and other UN bodies.

On the occasion of the 35th Session of FAO’s Committee on Fisheries (COFI), the SSF-GSF Advisory Group (AG) coordinated the development of a preliminary report aimed at providing some initial data and analysis on the status of implementation of the SSF guidelines in different countries of the world: The People Centred assessment of the Implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries. The assessment builds on substantive information provided by SSF organizations and Indigenous Peoples coming from 21 countries and, although the sample is not representative of all geographical areas, it still breaks new ground as the first-ever people-centred report on the implementation of the SSF Guidelines.