The second technical meeting of the Working Group on the fight against IUU fishing is organized by the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) from 17-19 May 2011, in Monrovia, Liberia. FCWC was created in November 2007 by the Cotonou Convention. This Committee comprises the following six countries: Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Togo, with Headquarters, GHANA.
According to the regional nature of their fisheries resources, latent conflicts in the exploitation of resources and the weakness of their capabilities, particularly in monitoring, control and surveillance, member countries are aware that none of them can satisfactorily resolved in isolation from the problems of the rationalization of their fisheries and the conservation of fishery resources in their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) to ensure food security for their populations.
The Committee aims to strengthen cooperation between Member States in the sustainable management of fisheries resources under national jurisdiction. After the adoption of regional plan to fight against illegal fishing adopted by all the ministers in charge of fisheries of the six member countries of FCWC in Accra, Ghana in December 2009, a working group is put in place to ensure harmonious implementation of this plan in our sub region.
The working group is a part of capacity building of national experts responsible for monitoring control and surveillance of national fisheries administration, reporting good practices and lessons learned by each member country in the conduct of measures to the fight against IUU fishing. It is also the best framework of consultations and validation of the technical proposals and monitoring and evaluation of regional projects to fight against IUU fishing in the sub region.
The second session of this Working Group has the following objectives:
1- Validation of the study on the development of national registers of industrial fishing vessels; 2- Assessment of progress achieved by each Member States in the fight against IUU fishing; 3- The development of the work plan of the Working Group over the period 2011-2010 .
The conclusions of this session will be strongly recommended at the next session of the Conference of Ministers of FCWC, scheduled for November 2011 in Lome, Togo. And will also contribute in global register of fishing vessels initiated by FAO.
The FCWC Working Group on IUU fishing is managed by Mr.Seraphin DEDI NADJE, Secretary General of FCWC Organization and funded by the European Union through the ACP Fish II Project.
