News
Preparing for the FAO Technical Consultation on the Voluntary Guidelines on Transshipment
The Pew Charitable Trusts and Stop Illegal Fishing, with support from The Waterloo Foundation hosted a webinar on the proposed Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Transshipment Voluntary Guidelines (the Guidelines), on May 5 2022. Participants were drawn from African countries and the webinar aimed to support engagement of members of the West Africa Task Force and the Southern African Development Community IUU Task Force, in the upcoming Technical Consultation on the Guidelines, due to be held in June 2022.
Alyson Kauffman, Senior Associate with the Ending Illegal Fishing programme of The Pew Charitable Trusts, provided an overview of the need for, and development of the Guidelines.
The FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI) has been building towards creating international transshipment guidelines since 2016, when its members specifically requested FAO begin work on transshipment. Following several high-level meetings, expert workshops and in-country research projects and field visits (including to Ghana), the FAO presented a report on this matter to members during the COFI biennial meeting in February 2021. This process identified the need to develop international transshipment guidelines to help RFMOs and governments manage the practice in a more coordinated, harmonized, and successful way.
An FAO Expert Consultation in October 2022 aimed to review and refine draft global guidelines, prepared by the FAO Secretariat. These draft guidelines will be negotiated at the upcoming Technical Consultation, open to all Members, in late May/early June 2022.
Sandy Davies, Stop Illegal Fishing, provided an overview of current transhipment practices, drawing on research published in two reports, (Moving Tuna: Transhipment in the Western Indian Ocean and Transhipment: Issues and Responses in the FCWC Region).
She stated, “Fish are borderless and can be caught in one nation or RFMO area of jurisdiction, get transshipped elsewhere, and landed in a third area of jurisdiction, making enforcement and oversight difficult. To ensure that this practice does not allow illegally caught fish to enter the supply chain, global guidelines are needed. These guidelines will provide a global framework so that flag, coastal, and port States, as well as regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) can better align transshipment regulations.”