Intending to tackle the scourge of IUU fishing and safeguard maritime security and resources in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, SIF announced their third commitment at ‘Our Ocean 2024’, hosted this year in Athens, Greece.

The Our Ocean Conference serves as a global platform for diverse stakeholders to address pressing challenges facing the world’s oceans. Since its launch in 2014, the conference has emerged as a pivotal forum for advancing actions toward its six focus areas – marine protected areas, sustainable blue economy, climate change, maritime security, sustainable fisheries, and marine pollution.

For the third time, SIF submitted a commitment to contribute to this global action. This commitment is to work with the SADC Monitoring, Control, and Surveillance Coordination Centre (MCSCC) in Maputo, Mozambique to implement a Regional Register of Fishing Vessels by 2026. This register, a core component of SADC’s fisheries cooperation since 2001, aims to streamline compliance, monitoring and enforcement efforts across the region.

SIF’s commitment – read during the Conference by Maya Bergh (SIF Intern) – will mark a significant step towards combating illegal fishing and strengthening regional cooperation. The Register, which will be developed over the coming years, will impose harmonized minimum standards, requiring foreign fishing vessels to meet specific criteria before being permitted to operate in the region. These criteria are likely to include requirements to: not be listed on an RFMO IUU vessel list, not have been issued any INTERPOL alert, possess a flag State authorisation, and have an official International Maritime Organisation (IMO) number. The Register will also have the advantage of contributing to the sustainability of the MCSCC by generating income, hence securing the long-term sustainability of the Centre.

Under the umbrella of this commitment, SIF is implementing two critical projects with the newly established MCSCC. These projects focus on strengthening regional cooperation, enhancing information sharing, and promoting transparency in fisheries management.

• The SADC ATLANTIC project, funded by the United States Department of State through the US Embassy in Botswana, is building capacity and developing tools and procedures to support Atlantic Oceans SADC countries to engage more fully in the processes of the regional centre.
• Alongside this, the OCEANS VIGILANCE project, funded by Oceans 5, seeks to facilitate the establishment of the SADC Regional Register of Fishing Vessels.

The collaborative efforts of SIF and SADC are already yielding tangible results. By strengthening human and institutional capacity in monitoring, control, and surveillance, these projects directly empower coastal states such as Angola, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, and Tanzania to combat IUU fishing activities. Key achievements include conducting 44 training sessions and equipping 384 relevant officers with essential skills in communication, remote monitoring, risk assessment, and law enforcement. SIF supported those national officers in conducting 114 risk assessments, empowering them to take concrete measures against fishing vessels and operators suspected or proved to have engaged in IUU fishing activities. Such measures have included denying port services to vessels under suspicion, denying registration of fishing licences, and successfully prosecuting offenders.

SIF’s commitment builds on our previous two commitments, which have now been fulfilled. SIF’s first commitment was made at the 2017 Our Ocean Conference in Malta on behalf of the FISH-i Africa Task Force by Elsa Patria (SIF Chair). The commitment was to launch a programme of Vigilance in the Western Indian Ocean, aimed to assess the legality of industrial fishing vessels licensed by FISH-i members (Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Somalia and the United Republic of Tanzania). Covering approximately 500 vessels, this commitment was fulfilled in 2022 with the support of FISH-i’s eight member countries.

SIF’s second commitment – made in 2018 in Bali by Kristín von Kistowski (SIF Member) –was to support the implementation of port State measures across Africa, aiming to fortify sustainable fisheries management practices. In collaboration with the FAO Global Capacity Development Programme for the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), SIF initiated a four-year capacity-building project. This initiative focused on enhancing expertise in identifying, inspecting, and investigating vessels engaged in IUU fishing activities across ten African ports. By fostering practical tools and facilitating information exchange mechanisms among port, coastal, and flag States, the project aimed to leverage the potential of the first binding international agreement targeting illegal fishing while facilitating knowledge-sharing o