The Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM), the CARICOM institution designated as the region’s inter-governmental organization responsible for fisheries development and management, has partnered with Norway, with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Blue Resilience Project, to host a high-level side event addressing organized crime in the global fisheries industry at the UN Oceans Conference, 2022. The side event was held in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, June 29 intended to highlight international and regional measures to address fisheries crime towards reducing food security threats with innovative digital tools and inter-agency capacity support, a CFRM release states.

CRFM’s executive director, Milton Haughton was down to chair a panel on CARICOM’s regional instruments to address fisheries crime. This event advances the efforts of partners to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and transnational organized crime in the fishing industry, while protecting food security, employment, and the blue economy.

Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries of Jamaica, Pearnel Charles; Minister of the Blue Economy & Civil Aviation, of Belize, Andre Perez; Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries etc, Saboto Caesar joined in the discussion on fisheries enforcement and the international and regional instruments to cooperatively tackle organized crime in the global fishing industry. Also joining the panel was project manager of Blue Resilience, UNDP, Emma Witbooi; and specialist director in the Fisheries Department at the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, Gunnar A. Stølsvik.

This was the first time the CRFM was collaborating with Norway to raise the profile of this issue at the UN Oceans Conference, and it serves to strengthen the alliance which began to be forged after the CRFM and its Member States endorsed the International Declaration on Transnational Organized Crime in the Global Fishing Industry (also known as ‘the Copenhagen Declaration’) and affirmed their support for the Blue Justice Initiative. Belize, Jamaica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines are among the 12 CRFM Member States which signed the Copenhagen Declaration in October 2021.