July 24, 2024
From July 5th to 7th, a hundred representatives of small-scale fishers from around the world gathered in Rome at the FAO for the second edition of the Small Scale Fisheries Summit (SSF Summit). Some of them also participated in the 36th session of the Committee on Fisheries (COFI), which ran until July 12th. The International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) Working Group on Fisheries was prominently involved, with around 30 fisher leaders representing major fisherfolk organizations and Indigenous Peoples worldwide. IPC members from 19 countries seized this opportunity to advance the Human Rights and Food Sovereignty of their Peoples and communities.
The IPC guided the Summit’s political discourse through a series of strategic actions and presentations, as presenting the Blue Economy Peoples Tribunals conducted by IPC members in Asia, South Africa, and Brazil. These tribunals were praised as effective participatory tools for protecting SSF rights and denouncing rights violations. Additionally, the presentation of the report by Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri on the right to food in the context of fisheries and climate change further reinforced the discussions. This effort was especially significant, marking the 10th anniversary of the SSF Guidelines’ adoption. The IPC’s contributions underscored the growing disconnect between these guidelines and the escalating poverty and hunger among fishing communities, as well as the marginalization of gender issues.
With the SSF Summit, the IPC was able to unify diverse SSF organizations worldwide and create a non-technical space where they could be heard by academia, ENGOs, intergovernmental institutions, and especially governments. Indeed the Summit facilitated some confrontations and dialogues with government representatives ahead of COFI36.
The SSF Summit underscored the need for governments to recognize the ancestral territories of SSF and Indigenous Peoples and to incorporate customary tenure rights into national fisheries policies. Customary tenure rights are often inadequately recognized, leaving women particularly vulnerable due to their exclusion from these systems and lack of land ownership rights. Additionally, the ongoing lack of financial support, health and education services, and adequate infrastructure continues to contribute to the poverty and marginalization of SSF, hindering them from reaching their full potential. We also reiterated our strong stance against initiatives as the 30×30 climate crisis initiative, rejecting it as a false solution, and WTO. We emphasized the critical need to reintegrate SSF into the COFI agenda, uniting attendees around this goal just prior the COFI.
The 36th session of COFI, held from July 8th to 12th, 2024, and chaired by Saudi Arabia, provided limited opportunities for observer participation, including for the IPC. Despite the 10th anniversary of the SSF Guidelines, small-scale fisheries were not prominently featured on the agenda. They were mentioned in several COFI papers and plenary discussions, but there was no dedicated agenda item focusing specifically on small-scale fisheries. For this reason, we urge governments and the COFI bureau to reintroduce a dedicated agenda item on small-scale fisheries. SSF communities and Indigenous Peoples are the backbone of ocean and inland ecosystems. Fisheries should not be viewed solely through an economic lens focused on fish stocks and market-driven systems like aquaculture. Such perspectives often result in the grabbing of territories, the dislocation of communities, the impoverishment of lands and waters, and the creation of vulnerable populations. It is fundamentally about the people and their deep connection to the waters and territories they depend on, for which they have been surviving for generations.
Our work does not end here. Given the current marginalized position of SSF in the political agenda and the promising decisions taken by COFI36, we will work in the years to come to bring renewed attention to SSF and the implementation of the SSF Guidelines before the next Sub-Committees and COFI sessions.
We will persist in our efforts to create spaces of unity and solidarity, where we can define our political agendas and continue fighting for the rights of SSF communities and Indigenous Peoples and taking a firm stand on SSF issues.