As part of efforts to end the scourge of illegal fishing in the West and Central Gulf of Guinea, the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) on Thursday announced plans to hold its twelfth meeting of the West Africa Task Force (WATF), in Lagos, Nigeria.
The meeting is scheduled to hold from May 10 to May 12 with participants from the six member countries. They include Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Togo.
Discussions at the international conference would focus on the sustainability of the regional monitoring, control, and surveillance (MCS) Centre.
According to the regional body’s press statement sent to The ICIR, the West Africa Task Force (WATF) was established in 2015 under the Fisheries Intelligence and MCS Support in West Africa project funded by the Norwegian Agency for International Development (Norad).
It has operationalised key regional and international instruments to combat IUU fishing. It has also strengthened regional information-sharing and cooperation between countries, interagency cooperation at the national level, and enforcement actions triggered by intelligence analysis and intelligence-sharing.
Reports say the gulf of guinea loses about $2 billion annually to illegal fishing. The trend has also denied rural communities whose source of livelihood is fishery their major source of income.