On the occasion of a webinar of the Ministerial Conference on Fisheries Cooperation among African States bordering the Atlantic Ocean (ATLAFCO) entitled "The Need to Protect Fishermen during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Promoting 'Marine Medicine'" on 13 August, CAOPA issued recommendations on how to improve these working conditions. In particular, by taking up two basic tools, the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 188 concerning Work in Fishing, and the FAO Voluntary Guidelines for securing Small-scale Fisheries, the professional artisanal fishers call on their governments to ratify C188 and put in place measures to implement it.
Nevertheless, this convention does not cover the entire fish value chain, explains CAOPA: women, though present throughout the chain and active especially on land, face precarious working conditions. This concern was taken into account in 2014 by the FAO Voluntary Guidelines for securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries, in which Chapter 6 deals with social development, employment and decent work. CAOPA thus calls on African governments to implement these guidelines through national action plans developed in a transparent, participatory and gender-sensitive manner.
At the end of the ATLAFCO webinar, recommendations, including CAOPA's requests, were made and will be published in the coming weeks.