In their own words: the role that Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) play in the implementation of the SSF Guidelines

Environmental Management and Economic Development Organisation (EMEDO), Tanzania

The Environmental Management and Economic Development Organisation (EMEDO), based in Tanzania, is an organisation seeking to tackle challenges facing Lake Victoria, such as reduced fish stocks, decline in biodiversity and deforestation. EMEDO has managed to implement locally based projects in different thematic areas such as environmental and natural resource management, water sanitation and hygiene, agriculture and livestock management, as well as strengthening transparency, accountability and good governance through community empowerment.

The partnership between EMEDO and FAO contributes towards enhancing the contribution of small-scale fisheries to food security and sustainable livelihoods. The role played by women in fisheries has a huge potential to significantly contribute towards sustainable food systems. Their predominance in the postharvest section of the fisheries value chain is central in ensuring that their families, and consumers more broadly, have access to food. However, they face a myriad of obstacles and often have unequal access to usable assets, technology, finance, and services as well as rights and opportunities resulting in their increased vulnerabilities to disadvantageous contracts, and unfair conditions and practices with regard to fish sales and markets. The compound effect is that women have limited influence over decisions that are critical to their livelihoods and to the way they contribute to food security, nutrition and sustainable food systems. One of the important approaches that EMEDO employ towards empowering women in fisheries has been to organize and facilitate “transformational leadership training for women’s rights and empowerment” to the national leaders of Tanzania Women fish workers Association (TAWFA).

The key element in this training is that ‘transformation’ is centred and rooted in the quality of relationships. The training is designed to develop capacities of leaders to intervene effectively in two specific relationship intensive areas: face-to-face interactions - allowing others access and voice in processes that influence their development; and the way relationships are structured in the intentional efforts designed to bring about justice and improved qualities of life.

The training aims to build transformational leaders that can respond constructively in direct face-to-face interactions, to reduce violence and increase justice in human relationships. This also increases their capacity to address systemic and structural changes. Women leaders who develop such qualities and values in themselves are in a stronger position to work for the transformation of their communities and their organizations for increased equity and inclusivity; especially in ways that empower women and hence contribute towards sustainable food systems.

International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF)

The International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) is an international organization that works towards the establishment of equitable and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale sector. It plays a central role in representing the needs and interests of fishers and fishworkers, particularly in the developing world, and plays an active role in promoting and implementing the SSF Guidelines.

The most salient aspect of the SSF Guidelines is that they are the outcome of one of the most ambitious consultation processes ever held by the FAO in the development of a global instrument. The SSF Guidelines have thus been through a reality check, especially in the global South, and is a living document that captures the concerns of small-scale artisanal fishing communities. The SSF Guidelines propose to address these concerns also from the perspective of social development.

Due to the emphasis on a human rights-based approach and the recognition of equitable development, the SSF Guidelines is perhaps the only instrument that small-scale fishing communities can readily identify with. This is evident in all countries where ICSF has organized events to promote awareness with FAO support (such as Brazil, Ghana, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar, India, and Sri Lanka), and from groups not necessarily involved in the consultation process prior to its negotiated development, such as the Indigenous Peoples of Amazonas, Brazil.

Implementation means carrying into effect or fulfilling the SSF Guidelines. CSOs and social movements that are continuously vigilant can see how the SSF Guidelines can potentially address the grievances, especially of the vulnerable and small-scale fishing communities against their marginalization. Transposing the SSF Guidelines into relevant institutions, mechanisms and processes at various levels can certainly create an enabling environment to resolve these issues and to reverse marginalization.

The challenge, of course, is to keep the SSF Guidelines vibrant and continuously relevant in appropriate forums, and to broaden the mandate of authorities to recognize not only sustainability of all parts of the ecosystems, but also the need to defend social and cultural well-being, and sustainable livelihoods of small-scale fishing communities, including women. This task, needless to say, is best performed by reform-oriented CSOs and social movements as custodians of the SSF Guidelines, particularly as defenders of human rights, and as the vanguard of social change.

The Global Advisory Group of the Global Strategic Framework on the implementation of the SSF Guidelines

The ‘Global Strategic Framework in support of the implementation of the SSF Guidelines’ enables everyone to contribute to the implementation of the SSF Guidelines. To find out more, please follow this link. Additionally, please see here for the role the ‘Advisory Group play in the Global Strategic Framework in support of the implementation of the SSF Guidelines’.

The SSF Guidelines were developed with the full and active participation of global fisher and fish workers’ social movements including the World Forum of Fisher People (WFFP) and the World Forum of Fish harvesters and Fish workers (WFF). The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) and La Via Campesina (LVC) also came out in support of it.

This active participation and social movements playing a leading role in the development of the SSF Guidelines means that the implementation of the SSF Guidelines becomes core to the national and local action programme of all the major global social movements. Hence, it is critical for social movements to be at the heart of driving the SSF Guidelines implementation. While acknowledging that States must make laws and regulations aligned to the Guidelines, it is fishing communities who must fight for this when it does not happen in full.

In this context, it is important that movements are involved in the implementation of the SSF Guidelines and development of policies supporting the development of small-scale fisheries. They can provide the local and customary SSF knowledge themselves, as this will vary from nation to nation and from culture to culture. Local movements must take the front seat in providing this information. For indigenous communities it is a means of helping to secure indigenous fishing rights. This will help protect human as well as food and nutritional rights as envisaged by the SSF Guidelines.

So too, social movements can highlight other societal inequalities and injustices experienced by women and other historically marginalised groups in the sector. In this way, movements and their members can provide answers for what, and how, corrective steps must be taken.

The generally inherent democratic practice within movements also means that decisions reached are broadly institutionalised. This ‘transformative characteristic’ of decision making is a progressive asset to help take forward the instances of small-scale fishing communities.

It is in this light that the global and regional structures put in place through the Global Strategic Framework for the implementation of the SSF Guidelines (SSF-GSF) must be understood. In the SSF-GSF global and regional Advisory Groups, fishers’ movements and local fishing communities must inform policy and management measures on protecting access to and controls of the fishery. This informs sustainability of use, climate change mitigation and biodiversity, and therefore, the work and programs of social movements should be acknowledged and supported in this regard.

©EMEDO