The International Pole and Line Foundation (IPNLF) promotes the sustainable management of the world’s responsible pole-and-line, handline and troll (collectively known as ‘one-by-one’) tuna fisheries while also recognising the importance of safeguarding the livelihoods they support.
IPNLF’s work to develop, support and promote one-by-one tuna fisheries is subsequently fully aligned with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We believe effective and equitable global governance is essential to protect and restore the ocean, and this should be achieved by ensuring the participation of local and coastal communities in decision-making processes.
The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) is an international federation of trade unions representing workers employed, among other sectors, in aquaculture, fish and seafood growing and processing. The IUF is composed of 421 affiliated trade unions in 128 countries representing over 10 million workers. It is based in Geneva, Switzerland. From its founding in 1920, international labour solidarity has been the IUFå«s guiding principle. This principle is implemented through: building solidarity at every stage of the food chain, international organizing within transnational companies (TNCs) global action to defend human, democratic, and trade union rights.
The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) is an international federation of transport workers’ trade unions with more than 20,000,000 million members in all transport sectors, which among the others represents fishers working at sea and on land, as part of the supply chain. The ITF is campaigning to protect and secure decent human and labour rights of the fishers worldwide in the world‰Ûªs Fishing is the world‰Ûªs most dangerous industry, mixed up with human trafficking, piracy, child labour, modern slavery and even murder. Effective regulation is vital. The ITF works with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and other relevant international organisation to address the plight of fishers on a global level. The ITF is actively involved in: – Promotion of ratification and implementation of the ILO Work in Fishing Convention No188,2007 which provide the minimum standards regarding employment of fishers: – Fighting to stop the abuse of fishers and fishworkers: – Combating social dumping: – Prevent and eliminate human trafficking in fishing: – Combating IUU fishing which is major threat to people and fisheries.
The ILO SEA Fisheries Project aims to reduce human trafficking and labour exploitation in fisheries by strengthening coordination and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of existing national and regional level anti-trafficking efforts in South East Asia. Our project aims include coordinating multi-stakeholder action plans; perform in-depth research in order to fill knowledge gaps; measure progress; and enhance overall communication within the regional fisheries industry.
The Sea Fish Industry Authority (Seafish) is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) set up to improve efficiency and raise standards across the UK seafood industry. Seafish is supporting the seafood industry to help eliminate unethical practices from UK seafood supply chains. This is all about harnessing the commitment of the seafood industry to respect human rights; about assessing and understanding modern slavery risks in the supply chain; acting to deal with identified risks; looking for remedies and solutions; monitoring progress and communicating best practice. Seafish has introduced a number of integrated work areas. These include:
– Establishing the Seafood Ethics Common Language Group (SECLG) to bring industry and other stakeholders together to collaboratively understand how ethical issues can be addressed across the supply chain.
– Producing 15 profiles identifying social risks in regions supplying the UK market. These profiles were aimed at informing purchasing decisions in seafood businesses.
– Raised industry awareness of ethical issues and supporting seafood businesses to comply with UK Modern Slavery legislation.
– Developed Tools for Ethical Seafood Sourcing (TESS) to signpost stakeholders to resources to help manage and reduce risks associated with labour issues and worker welfare in seafood supply chains.
– Developed and implemented the voluntary Seafish Responsible Fishing Scheme (RFS) certifying high standards of crew welfare and responsible catching practices on fishing vessels.
– Worked with the supply chain to develop the voluntary Responsible Fishing Ports Scheme which includes worker welfare.
– Produced and disseminated briefings to improve knowledge of the issues and inform key stakeholders about the latest initiative.
Plan International Thailand has been working with communities, civil society and the government to advance children‰Ûªs rights and gender equality since 1981. Much of Thailand is well developed, however, there are a number of marginalized groups such as children of migrant workers and stateless people who our work is focused on. Our key areas of work include: ‰Û¢ Gender justice and women’s empowerment: Strengthening the participation and leadership capacity of girls and women so they can make informed decisions about their lives and reach their potential. ‰Û¢ Children on the move: Ensuring migrant children can exercise their rights to education, health care and protection. ‰Û¢ Legal status and citizenship: Helping stateless people, particularly girls, to exercise their rights and access services so they can achieve a better quality of life.
Tools for Ethical Seafood Sourcing (TESS) is a web tool that points you to a whole host of useful (and free) resources which can help businesses address social responsibility challenges in their seafood supply chains. TESS launched in March 2017 as a one-stop-resource-shop. It starts with an overview of the social issues impacting on the seafood supply chain. Seafish recognised that with so many different sources of information available on ethical issues, which range from identifying issues through to international standards and ‰Û÷on the ground‰Ûª initiatives working on the issues, it can be challenging for seafood businesses to understand this complex landscape and then decide what they need to do to identify issues and make improvements. This is where TESS can help. TESS charts a straight-forward business improvement cycle. All the featured resources (presented as interactive records) are linked to one of six steps in this cycle which has been designed to help systematically tackle issues in seafood supply chains. All the information is publicly available on external websites, so you are taken to the source of the information. The benefit of TESS is that it brings all these resources together in one place. As well as following the six step approach there is a fully searchable database so that you can find all this information on initiatives, standards and organisations very simply.
ILAB’s mission is to promote a fair global playing field for workers in the United States and around the world by enforcing trade commitments, strengthening labor standards, and combating international child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking. The bureau is comprised of three offices: the Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking, the Office of Trade and Labor Affaris, and the Office of International Relations and Economic Research. For more information about the work of each office, see https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/about-us/mission.
The Labour Rights Promotion Network Foundation (LPN) is a leading non-government organisation working in Thailand to address issues of human trafficking, migrant rights, and migrant child safeguarding. The organisation has its base in the coastal province of Samut Sakhon, 45 kilometers southwest of Bangkok. LPN has worked with communities in Samut Sakhon and surrounding provinces for over a decade. Priority issues include migrant child issues, child trafficking, forced and bonded child labour and illegal employment of children. To address these issues LPN advocates for the provision of education, fair and equal rights for migrant child and their families, and access to appropriate healthcare and information. Given the acute vulnerability of migrant children in Samut Sakhon, and Thailand as a whole, LPN channels significant amounts of time and resources into promoting migrant child issues and providing care, assistance, and safeguarding services to past, current, and potential victims of exploitation and rights violations.
The Pew Charitable Trusts‰Ûª ending illegal fishing project is working to ensure a sustainable future for our oceans by combatting illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. As unscrupulous operators seek to maximize profits by exploiting fish stocks or loopholes in management they frequently pay little attention to the safety and working conditions for vessel crews. Fortunately, the seafood industry can implement tools that help tackle these issues together. Pew is bringing together stakeholders from governments, authorities, and the seafood industry, to change behaviors and significantly reduce IUU fishing by improving the oversight and knowledge of fishing activities. An element of this includes entry into force of the International Maritime Organization‰Ûªs Cape Town Agreement (CTA), an international treaty which sets minimum safety standards and inspection criteria for fishing vessels. Harmonized implementation of the CTA, alongside the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations‰Ûª Agreement Port State Measures, which aims to prevent illegally caught fish from entering ports, and the International Labour Organization‰Ûªs Work in Fishing Convention, which establishes the base requirement for decent working and living conditions on board ships, will reap rewards. The seafood industry is in a unique position to help, it can advocate for governments to put such policies in place. By mandating that vessels can be uniquely identified and tracked, catch subject to port controls and transshipment activity monitored, tracking and tracing the people and product in supply chains should be possible. By doing this opportunities for the exploitation of fisheries and fishers will be reduced.
Stop the Traffik Australia Coalition raises awareness of modern slavery, child labour, we work across companies, government, civil society to help create a shared responsibility
EJF conducts detailed field-based investigations, coupled with extensive background research to inform high-level advocacy directed at policy makers and key industry stake-holders. In some circumstances, EJF will provide specialist training and support, both to Government and civil society. We work in collaboration with a diverse range of stake-holders.