In June 2014, the Committee on Fisheries of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) endorsed the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines). While there has been a lot of work focusing on the implementation of this instrument, it remains unclear how the existing national legal and policy frameworks can support the respective countries in meeting these international requirements and standards.

Whichever political, legal and/or customary system a country may have, law offers an important legal ground for small-scale fishers to seek formal recognition and protection of their rights while ensuring the burden of applicable duties does not fall disproportionate on their end. Policy is another fundamental instrument that can be used to draw attention of government and relevant authorities to small-scale fisheries issues, periodically setting out priorities, objectives, strategies and plans, which small-scale fishers can benefit from.

The importance of law and policy to small-scale fisheries becomes evident when we know what such instruments provide for and address. Their broad coverage of fisheries in general make them applicable to small-scale fisheries and when they address topics in the SSF Guidelines, even at a general level, such as governance of tenure, sustainable resources management, gender and climate change, their application to small-scale fisheries becomes more pertinent.

States and all relevant actors, including small-scale fishers and communities, should work together towards unlocking legal and policy frameworks, identifying which provisions can be used as legal basis for them to fight for their rights, and clarifying which parts of the policy relate to their issues so they can participate and support in its implementation. The more small-scale fisheries actors work together to understand what legislation and policy provide for, the better are the chances for implementing the SSF Guidelines and for enhancing small-scale fisheries sustainability.

In light of this need, the project ‘Unlocking national legal and policy frameworks’ aims to improve our understanding about how the relevant instruments can be interpreted and applied in support of the SSF Guidelines implementation.

We invite you to participate in this project through the following steps. First, take a look at the ‘Unlocking legal and policy frameworks for Small-Scale Fisheries’ template, which should be completed by a small group of legal scholars or country experts, who have good knowledge about legal systems and policy frameworks in a given country. If you are interested in helping with this, please send us the “Expression of Interest” by email to tbti.global@gmail.com. Indicate in the email what country you would like to work on, and we’ll put you in touch with others interested in the same country. Let us know if you already have a team of experts who will work with you.

Templates completed by October 15^st will be included in a TBTI e-book on the topic, to be released in November 2020, with your name(s) as the author(s) of the contribution.

‘Unlocking national legal and policy framework’ attempts to enhance our understanding of how legal and policy instruments that pertain to fisheries can be interpreted and applied in support of the SSF Guidelines implementation.

On the 2^nd of September, 2020, over 40 researchers and representatives of civil society organizations from Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, and Morocco participated in the webinar to learn about the call and find out how best to approach the research questions to unlock legal and policy frameworks for small scale fisheries.

The webinar program included the following:

• Welcome and introduction to the webinar by Dr. Ratana Chuenpagdee
• Introduction of country teams
• Overview presentation on legal frameworks and concepts by Julia Nakamura
• Illustration on how to complete the Small-scale Fisheries legal and policy framework template by Mostafa El Halimi