After weeks of meetings with national authorities and partners, USCOFEP-CI suggests a plan to improve living and working conditions for women fish processors, and asks for some of the EU SFPA sectoral support funds to be redirected to the fight against Covid-19
Since mid-March, social distancing and other restriction measures have progressively been applied by the Ivory Coast government to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. Women in artisanal fisheries, organized via the Union of cooperatives USCOFEP-CI, have left no stone unturned to ensure the continuation of their activities so that food can be on the plate for their families but also for the Ivorian population. Fish accounts for an average of 22% of protein intake in sub-Saharan Africa and in some countries, this exceeds 50%.
“It is not possible for women in small-scale fisheries to stop their activities because, given their small means, they live from day to day,” explains Micheline Dion Somplehi, president of USCOFEP-CI. “Women fish vendors, for example, have to go out and sell the little fish they can buy every day, otherwise their families have nothing to eat.
Restriction measures to fight Covid-19 pandemic are taking a terrible toll on artisanal fisheries as the men and women involved have close contacts at all stages of the value chain. However, for USCOFEP-CI women, prevention is key and this is why, from the last weeks of March, they have been sensitizing in several landing sites for people to keep social distancing and to respect hygiene measures. “We raise awareness so that people wash their hands when they enter the market, and wear gloves”.
Women from USCOFEP-CI have travelled to several landing sites with the minister to sensitize about social distancing measures. Photo: USCOFEP-CI.
The demand for these hygiene products has increased in this turbulent period and USCOFEP-CI women several times had to contribute from their savings to buy the sanitary kits. In some landing sites, they control the access to reduce the amount of people interacting and forced every client to wash their hands.
For USCOFEP-CI women, this health crisis shows the lack of decent working and sanitary conditions in artisanal fisheries, and they see this pandemic as an opportunity to address these issues. After several discussions with the fisheries ministry, they have identified a series of recommendations, which include measures to fight against Covid-19, coupled with a long-term plan to improve their working conditions.
Can the EU-Côte d’Ivoire SFPA help?
Côte d’Ivoire is a net importer of fish. Of the more than 400,000 tons of fish needed per year, approximately only 75,000 tons are landed by the local sector, including industrial and artisanal fishing; the rest, is imported from Mauritania, Senegal or China (cartons of frozen fish).
The current protocol of the EU-Côte d’Ivoire Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement (SFPA) encourages EU shipowners to sell a certain quantity of “faux thon” (damaged or undersized tuna, or by-catch which is not used by the canneries) directly to Ivorian cooperatives of women fish processors, and the SFPA sectoral support comprises a fund to assist them for the purchase of the fish.
At the beginning of March 2020, for Women International Day, when Covid-19 crisis was at their door USCOFEP-CI held a meeting to take stock of the progress made in the implementation of the SFPA.
The non-availability of the faux thon sold directly to the women fish processors means that they only have access to raw material sold by middlemen at prohibitive prices. Women buy the fish at 325 CFA francs per kilo, and sell the processed product at 375 CFA francs per kilo. But the costs incurred by women are more than 5 times higher than the expected benefit. Women fish processors work at a loss. To face the challenges of the epidemic, “the materialisation of the promise to make available faux thon, - we would need 10.000 tons annually-, would be a godsend,” USCOFEP-CI notes. But the Covid-19 crisis has delayed the landing of “faux thon” further…
Photo de famille of USCOFEP-CI women at a meeting for International Women’s Day, when they took stock of the progress made in the implementation of the EU-Côte d’Ivoire SFPA. Banner and photo: Andrea Durighello/GIZ.
In its plan to improve women working conditions, the USCOFEP-CI reiterates its commitment to support the implementation of the EU-Côte d'Ivoire Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement, with the objective of improving the living and working conditions of its members, while contributing to food security and the job creation.
To that end, USCOFEP-CI requires the supervised landing of faux thon and its direct sale to women fish processors, to make it possible to have remunerative prices and bypass the abusive middlemen.
The organisation also wants the SFPA sectoral support to have a special focus on women fish processors needs, both on the short term for mitigating the impacts of Covid-19 on their communities, and on the longer term to allow them to work in better hygiene and health conditions, including by improving the fish landing and fish processing infrastructures.