January 15, 2024
The IPC Working Group on Fisheries is participating in the 1st meeting of the FAO Sub-Committee on Fisheries Management. The meeting is taking place virtually from the 15th to the 18th of January 2024. The Sub-Committee’s mission is to provide essential technical and policy guidance on fisheries governance and management. The goal is to advance the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and identifying significant global issues and trends in fisheries management and sustainable development that require urgent measures, offering guidance and recommendations for addressing them. This meeting kicks off an important year of mobilization for small scale fishing communities, because 2024 marks the 10th anniversary of the SSF Guidelines, approved in 2014 by the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI). That’s why the IPC launched a global statement expressing concern about the marginal recognition of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries and the lack of implementation at the national level.
We’ll continue to emphasize the need to properly implement the guidelines in national legislatons, to ensure fishers’ rights are adequately recognized, protected and promoted. To face today’s challenges, from climate change to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU), we need a structural change in fisheries’ policies, and the SSF Guidelines are the most important tool around wich to build the change.
Read our statements here below
Our statement on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing (IUU) HERE Our statement on Mainstreaming Biodiversity in Small Scale Fisheries HERE Our statement on Climate Change HERE Our statement on Current Fisheries Management Practices HERE