The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has published “Involving the People – Democratizing the implementation and monitoring of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication” in its Fisheries and Aquaculture Circular series.
The publication on the SSF Guidelines, by John Kurien, Founder Member of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) and Visiting Professor at Azim Premji University, India, is FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Circular No. 1242.
Noting that the past two decades have witnessed the negotiation and adoption of numerous voluntary guidelines within the United Nations (UN) system, the publication states that a significant feature observed in the negotiation process of all these guidelines has been the varying degree of participation by a whole range of non-state actors – conventionally referred to as civil society actors.
In the case of the SSF Guidelines, which were officially approved as an international instrument in June 2014, there was a significant bottom-up process to consolidate the concerns of the small-scale fisheries sector for inclusion in the negotiating process. Over 4,000 persons – the majority of whom were women and men fishers and fishworkers, and a variety of other civil society representatives from over 120 countries – participated in the process, the publication points out.
It goes on to argue that a radical change is needed in order to mainstream community participation into the implementation and monitoring of guidelines of the type described above. There is a need to “take back voluntary guidelines to the community”; demystify their contents; assess with the community what indicators will be utilized to evaluate the progress of implementation; and think through with them the nature of tools to be used for this purpose. Basically, the call is for a democratization of the implementation and monitoring of voluntary guidelines, making them by, for and of the community.
The SSF Guidelines were created as a result of a long history of struggle on the part of small-scale fishworkers around the world, who appealed for greater recognition of their status and role in the fisheries sector of their countries.
Throughout the world, small-scale fishers form the backbone of the fisheries sectors of countries. However, they have been ignored and often discriminated against in the process of modernization of the fisheries sector. Despite this neglect, the sector has survived and even remained vibrant in most countries.
Nonetheless, while small-scale fishing communities usually contribute the largest share of fish caught, decades of this “official neglect” continue to keep small-scale fisher people poor, marginalized and deprived of their human rights for socio-economic and cultural development. As a result, the diverse contributions they make to their national economies are undervalued at best and neglected at worst.
The SSF Guidelines are both a recognition of this reality by FAO Members and, at the same time, an effort to bring small-scale fisheries back as a focal point of fisheries development and management, says the new publication.
It can be downloaded at: https://www.fao.org/3/cb8058en/cb8058en.pdf