ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – Dominica is hosting a two-day Blue Justice Initiative regional workshop to tackle fisheries crimes. Project manager at the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Blue Resilience, Dr Emma Witbooi, said, “What we do is we support countries in effective governance to prevent and to address organized crime in the fishery sector.”
She said that it is a project under the International Declaration Against Transnational Organized Crime in the global fishing industry, known as the Copenhagen Declaration, which was signed in 2018 and currently has 61 country parties.
“So, as we know, fisheries crime poses a very major sustainable development challenge, and this is specifically for large ocean nations because they depend so heavily on the ocean for food security, for jobs, for economic resilience. “
Witbooi said in the Caribbean, UNDP Blue Resilience is very happy to support the Blue Justice Caribbean hub in facilitating information sharing and inter-agency cooperation towards institutionalizing regional action against organized crime in fisheries.
She said that the focus of the two-day event, which officials from various regional countries attend, “is very much on supporting strengthened coordination between the various agencies at sea and on land along the value and supply chain, and that’s coupled with cross-border cooperation.
“So the operational use by these various agencies along the value and supply chain of this digital data as evidence in fisheries crime prosecutions is really the focus of what this workshop is all about,” she added.
Dominica is among the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM) Member States, strengthening their capacity to combat fisheries crime under the Blue Justice Initiative. The CRFM is partnering with Norway and the UNDP to address transnational organized crime in the fishing industry, covering illegal fishing, drug trafficking, and money laundering.
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