CFFA and CAOPA comment on the FAO guidance on social responsibility in fisheries and aquaculture value chains during the public consultation.
Since 2016, countries have expressed an increasing concern for the social and work conditions as well as the social sustainability in the fish value chains. At the 33rd COFI session, Member States gave the mandate to FAO to develop a guidance that would offer practical support for companies in the sector to observe international standards and to uphold human and labour rights. For this, last June, FAO invited actors from trade unions, fishworker organisations, NGOs, academia and private sector, including the African Confederation of Artisanal Fisheries Organisations (CAOPA) and CFFA, for a dialogue on social responsibility along the fisheries and aquaculture value chains.
FAO has subsequently facilitated a public consultation with all stakeholders via an electronic platform. The draft is to be presented at the 2019 Subcomittee on fish trade (COFI-FT) session. CAOPA and CFFA have jointly commented on the guidance draft and highlighted several concerns but particularly the excessive focus on (industrial) companies in the proposed text. Indeed, the way the guidance is drafted makes it only for the use of (industrial) companies as it does not address the needs of artisanal value chains and is missing some of its up and downstream operations, from boat building to distribution and retailing. Furthermore, throughout the guidance, (industrial) companies appear to be the only acting stakeholder while the workers appear to be the passive recipients, instead of facilitating the empowerment of all workers, men and women, in the value chains, including artisanal fishers.
On the other hand, the implementation of these guidance by companies to the benefit of their own workers could potentially act as a “social certification” which would not be taking into account the potential negative impact of this company may have on the wider environment. For example, a fishmeal company may take steps to improve the conditions of its workers and may be considered “socially sustainable”, when its actions might be contributing to the over-fishing of small pelagic and jeopardizing food security of local populations by redirecting the flow of catches to fishmeal production.
As the text does not address the key issues that concern small-scale fishers, CFFA and CAOPA suggest the creation of a specific guidance for artisanal fisheries with references to social aspects and minimum requirements drawn from the FAO Voluntary Guidelines for securing small-scale fisheries (VGSSF Guidelines) and ILO Convention C188 on work in the fishing sector. This guidelines should help all stakeholders, including governments, to make use of these internationally accepted instruments to promote socially responsible value chains and to empower men and women in the artisanal fishing sector.
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Download the full CFFA/CAOPA contribution.