The UN/FAO Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines were the first sector-specific international UN guidelines to involve a huge participatory process, whereby the fisher community, state and civil society interacted in diverse ways as part of a long voyage involving struggle, empathy and support. This is the significant story that Dr. John Kurien, Honorary Fellow, WorldFish, will tell at Transdisciplinarity and Transformation for the Future of Small-Scale Fisheries’, the 3rd World Small-Scale Fisheries Congress on 22?26 October 2018 in Chiang Mai, Bangkok. Efforts to involve fishers, local-level SSF problems, issues and initiativesacross continentswere quite extensive, says Dr. Kurien. These concerns were included in a single civil society organization (CSO) document, which was also discussed at the FAO level to be able to incorporate larger international concerns. These inputs then led to the formation of a zero draft of the SSF Guidelines that was discussed by over 4000 persons (including fishers, CSO activists and state representatives) in 120 countries over two years. The consensus was that most of the important concerns of the fishing community and civil society were taken on board. Many lessons can be learned from the process, says Dr. Kurien. Firstly, participatory processes take time and entail many compromises. Secondly, despite this, it is an empowering’ process because all those involved feel a sense of ownership of the guidelines. And thirdly, this is important to ensure that the implementation is also participatory. Community-state-civil society involvement is the only credible and sustainable way of creating and fashioning global policy. If participation is innate in the creation of policy, it will also be inherent in the implementation of the policy. It would be ideal if all local, national, regional and international policies are negotiated in this fashion. The reality of politics and time do not normally permit this to happen. The SFF Guidelines therefore stand out as one ideal example’ of participatory policy makinga people-public-private’ collaboration. To my knowledge, this is the first sector-specific international UN Guideline which has entailed such a huge participatory process in its formulation. The credit for this goes equally to the FAO/UN, the SSF fishing community and civil society organizations.