A basic condition for dealing with the problem of global illegal fishing is to “restore respect for international law”, the former UN Under-Secretary-General and Legal Counsel said at a seminar in Stockholm.
Hans Corell added that, in that sense, the situation had “totally deteriorated” over the last few years.
“When big nations and Security Council members attack Iraq in breech of the UN Charter, and another member attacks Georgia in breech of that same charter – what signals does that send to smaller nations?”, Corell rhetorically asked at the seminar commemorating the publishing of a report from the Swedish FAO Committee titled “The Roving Bandits of Modern Fisheries”.
Corell was Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations 1994-2004. He stressed that he now, being retired, had the possibility to speak out in “considerably plainer terms”.
Many of those nations Corell now criticised without calling names see themselves as states governed by law, “but that can’t stop at the nation’s border”. “How is it possible that EU member nations can function as landing points and markets for illegal catches, as this report shows? Wasn’t the union supposed to be an instrument for law and order?”
Pointing out that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) now has more than 150 parties, he concluded that “all is not darkness”, but foresaw that the Arctic will be the next point of conflict, emerging with the melting of the polar ice cap.
The “Roving Bandits” report, written by two researchers at the Stockholm University-based Stockholm Resilience Centre, concluded that the chains of trade in fisheries products are growing increasingly complex, making them a truly global commodity. The same goes for those who provide the catches – modern fishing vessels have the capacity to rove wide areas, staying out weeks on end. This, the report said, creates conditions for a very flexible fishing industry, “particularly if it chooses not to follow existing rules”.
What the report terms “Roving Bandits” – global players in the field of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishery – is a phenomenon that illustrates the kind of difficulties even authorities in nations with well developed institutions will have to deal with, it said, concluding that the need for “political power to act” is dire.
The report will be presented in an English version by the end of December.