The fisheries sector is a source of employment and income for more than 43 million fishers and fish farmers in the world, and the great majority of these live in developing countries, principally in Asia. When jobs produced through secondary activities and the number of dependents each jobholder provides for are counted, estimations indicate that this sector assure the livelihoods of a total of about 520 million people worldwide. (FAO, 2009c: 23 and 26). In terms of nutrition, per capita fish consumption has been increasing steadily in the past four decades, from an average of 9.9 kg in the 1960s to 16.4 kg in 2005. Although the per capita fish consumption in low-income food-deficit countries is only half that of industrialized countries, the contribution of fish to total animal protein intake in these countries is significant at about 20 percent. Fish is highly nutritious, and provides not only high-value protein, but is also an important source of essential micronutrients, minerals and fatty acids (FAO, 2009c: 59-61). Most fishing communities in the developing world are characterized by social and economic vulnerability, particularly subsistence and small-scale fishers. As noted by the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI), small-scale fishers often face precarious and vulnerable living and working conditions due to insecure rights to land and fisheries resources, inadequate health and educational services and social safety nets, and exclusion from wider development processes because of weak organizational structures and inadequate participation in decision making (FAO, 2007a). Competition with industrial fishers for access to declining resources, and the degradation of the resources due to over-fishing and pollution, are other challenges for small-scale and subsistence fishers. Besides fishers and fishworkers, other groups are also affected by the availability of fish to meet their food needs, including better-off fish consumers. These considerations highlight perhaps the most salient link between the fisheries sector and the realization of the right to food: the sustainability of the fisheries resources and the availability and access to these resources for fishing communities and consumers in general. Conservation and sustainable use of the fisheries resources is therefore one of the key elements for achieving respect for and protection of the right to food for fishing communities and consumers, and failing to achieve this means that the ability