Saturday 22 January was a day of celebration for the 4,651 women affiliated to the Union des Sociétés Coopératives des Femmes de la Pêche et assimilées de Côte d'Ivoire (USCOFEP-CI). Many of them came from all over the country to attend the ceremony for laying the foundation stone of the Cité Aronia, a project for 500 affordable housing units to which they will have access after an initial contribution of 1.5 million CFA francs (€2,300) and a lease-purchase agreement that would allow them to buy the housing in about ten years.
"This estate will serve as an example, in Côte d'Ivoire and other African countries, to show how to improve women's living conditions," says the president of USCOFEP-CI, Micheline Dion. Ms. Dion explains that these women are currently living in extreme precariousness and often sleep on the processing sites with their children, without running water or electricity, in smoke and odours. This has an impact on their health as well as on their children's education.
According to a study by a team of researchers from the University Félix-Houphouët-Boigny of Abidjan Cocody, 50% of women have respiratory problems because of their work, 17% suffer from typhoid fever or blood pressure problems. According to these researchers, the use of traditional ovens harms the health of women smokers, who are seriously affected by prolonged exposure to smoke and heat.
YEARS OF ADVOCACY AND SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
To improve their living and working conditions, the women of USCOFEP-CI met almost a year ago on International Women's Day to review progress and make recommendations to improve their advocacy. They set two goals: access to social housing and affordable health care.
Today, it is a dream that is slowly coming to life. On 9 January 2021, the women of USCOFEP-CI first signed an agreement with the property developer "Aronia-geo et énergies", an Ivorian company, for the construction of the estate, which is between half an hour and an hour's drive from their workplace. They also signed a health insurance agreement based on the state's universal health coverage (CMU) for the families of the women fish processors.
Each of these homes has 3 or 4 rooms and costs 13.5 million CFA francs (€20,600). The women will have access to them with a personal contribution of 1.5 Million FCFA and a monthly hire-purchase which can be spread over 10 to 13 years. They will be the owners after the purchase. The first sample home should be finalised around April.
ACCESS TO RAW MATERIALS REMAINS THE MAIN CHALLENGE
The potential income for a woman processor over the 3 months of the artisanal fishing season can reach up to 4 million CFA francs (approximately €6,100). However, during the rest of the year, when there is no fish, these women process fish landed by Ivorian flagged vessels but operated by Chinese companies, or even process frozen fish and aquaculture products. They struggle to earn 90-150,000 CFA (€140-230) per month by combining fish processing with other activities.
In July 2020, a small victory for the women of USCOFEP-CI. The Ivorian Ministry of Animal and Fishery Resources (MIRAH), through the Support Programme for the Sustainable Management of Fishery Resources (PAGDRH), has thus set up a fund, from the financial contribution of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement (SFPA) with the European Union, to help improve the income of women fish processors.
With an initial amount of 17 million CFA francs (approx. €26,000), USCOFEP-CI purchased a forty-foot refrigerated container for the conservation and processing of fish. The internal management committee of USCOFEP-CI decided to place it in San-Pedro, a fish-producing area 300 km west of Abidjan, where, given the lack of conservation facilities, large quantities of fish landed are lost. Thanks to the refrigerated container, the women processors were able to store the fish there during the successive curfew periods and confinements in Côte d'Ivoire, which were restrictions imposed to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.
In July 2020, a small victory for USCOFEP-CI: through a fund set up under the EU-Côte d'Ivoire fisheries agreement, women bought a refrigerated container to store fish. Photo gallery: USCOFEP-CI.
Micheline Dion insists, however, that "it is absolutely necessary to create and support additional activities to help these women progress". Last summer she said that "the fulfilment of the promise to make 'faux thon' available would be a godsend."
The current SFPA protocol encourages EU shipowners to sell a certain amount of "faux thon" (damaged or undersized tuna, or by-catch not used by canneries) directly to Ivorian cooperatives of women fish processors, and the SFPA's sectoral support includes a fund to help them buy the fish.
However, the unavailability of "faux thon" sold directly to women fish processors means that they only have access to the raw material sold through intermediaries at prohibitively high prices. USCOFEP-CI aims to ensure that these women have access to the raw material to continue their activities by continuing to advocate for their inclusion and access to "faux thon".
IMPLEMENTing the SMALL-SCALE FISHERIES GUIDELINES
Ms. Dion referred to the implementation of the FAO Voluntary Guidelines for securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries. Chapter six of these guidelines effectively refers to social development, employment and decent work throughout the artisanal fisheries value chain. In particular, that members of fishing communities "have access to affordable conditions of access to these essential public services as well as to [...] decent housing, essential safe and hygienic sanitation services, safe drinking water for personal and domestic use and energy sources".
However, this estate will also meet other pressing needs highlighted by the guidelines, such as point 6.14, which calls on the State to "ensure and promote access to schools [...] respecting [...] equal opportunities for all, boys and girls, men and women". Section 6.15 is devoted to the well-being of children. Ms. Dion said that it is planned that the city "will have a school from kindergarten to 12th grade" as well as a "children's play area".
The project will also have a health centre to monitor the health of women already weakened by their work and to raise awareness about HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases that are prevalent in artisanal fishing communities.
Finally, the plans for the housing estate include a digital telecentre (where there will also be small training courses in the use of computers), a meeting room for women, and a shopping centre with a bank, a supermarket and restaurants.
West Africa has pioneered several decades of artisanal fisheries management reform. Yet there are still major obstacles to co-management: a lack of political will reflected in low budgetary allocations; inadequate and poorly targeted support for fisher organizations; poorly defined roles and responsibilities of fishers in co-management; lack of enforcement of inshore exclusive zones; and inadequate defense of human rights and particularly the important role of women.