Sierra Leone is ranked at the bottom of the UN’s Human Development Index. Pirate fishing is robbing one of the poorest countries in the world of a crucial source of developmental income and food security | ||||
Located on the coast of West Africa, Sierra Leone is in the process of attempting to recover from a brutal civil war, which lasted from 1991 to 2002. This devastating conflict resulted in more than 50,000 deaths and the displacement of more than 2 million people, equal to approximately one-third of the total population. Infrastructure such as roads, schools and hospitals, as well as food production capacity, were damaged and destroyed.
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Most Sierra Leoneans live with little or no access to any form of healthcare, education, sanitation or clean water and sufficient nutritionAs a result developmental indicators for the country are extremely low. Sierra Leone has been recently ranked 180 of 182 countries by the United Nation’s Human Development Index - effectively making it one of the least developed nation on earth.
Currently 70% of the population live below the national poverty line of a dollar a day; 51% are undernourished; 26% live in extreme poverty and 27% of children under 5 are malnourished. One of every eight mothers can be expected to die in childbirth. Most Sierra Leoneans live with little or no access to any form of healthcare, education, sanitation or clean water and sufficient nutrition. Vulnerable war-torn or post-conflict nations are particularly targeted by illegal fishing operators, and Sierra Leone is an unfortunate example. The country has plentiful natural resources and its productive coastal waters are an invaluable source of food and employment for its people. But in recent years foreign pirate fishing vessels have multiplied, taking advantage first of the chaos of the civil war, and more recently of the lack of capacity of the Sierra Leonean government to monitor and control their coastal waters. | ||||
Sierra Leone is being targeted by unscrupulous pirate fishermen in order to satiate the ever burgeoning demand for seafood in the EU and Far East
Local fishers in Sierra Leone repeatedly report to EJF that the extent and impact of these illegal operations is growing and hitting them hard. Fish are getting smaller, both in numbers and size, and fishers are being forced to go out to sea in ever growing distances and lengths of time to get adequate catches, often in small canoes and pirogues that dangerously were not built for the job.
We need your helpClick here to see how you can help usOut at sea pirate vessels will run through local nets and hooks that might have taken years of saving to buy. Even more seriously, pirate trawlers have been reported to engage in direct conflicts with local fishers - including running down canoes, and attacking with stones (sometimes with a slingshot) and boiling water. The threat of harm and loss of livelihoods is forcing many artisanal fishers to abandon fish altogether. IUU fishing impacts fundamentally upon two issues in Sierra Leone: economic development and basic food security. Fish are the life-blood of coastal villages in Sierra Leone, and represents many communities’ only source of income and livelihoods. Fishing permeates Sierra Leonean society, providing not only a source of income and food for the fishermen themselves, but also for those – primarily women – involved in supplementary activities such as fish processing and smoking, boat building and fish trade and distribution. Around 30,000 artisanal fishers and 200,000 ancillary workers are engaged in traditional fish capture, processing and intra-regional trade, and fisheries represent about 10% of GDP. Fish is also the most affordable and widely available protein source, and constitutes a remarkable 80% of animal protein consumed in the country. | ||||
Fisheries could be contributing significantly to poverty reduction in Sierra Leone, and is particularly significant to food security and the rural poorThe Government of Sierra Leone has limited resources and capacity to patrol and monitor the activities of illegal foreign fishing vessels in its national waters.
The Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MoFMR) has an extremely limited budget of 610 million Leones (around USD 200,000), and is hampered by a lack of reliable, up-to-date information about fish stocks in Sierra Leonean waters. The real impact of IUU fishing upon fish stocks in Sierra Leone is therefore unknown and combined with the limited capacity of the Ministry makes any attempt at creating a sustainable management policy an enormous challenge. The Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF) Maritime Wing is responsible for monitoring and enforcement, but is also severely handicapped. Offshore capacity is limited to a single patrol cutter donated by the Chinese government, but as this was originally designed for work on China’s inland waterways it is largely unsuitable for use in the open ocean. There is no air capacity. Smaller inshore patrol craft have been donated by the United States and China, however funds for fuel and spare parts severely limits at-sea time. In the eight quarters of 2007 and 2008, the Sierra Leone Maritime Wing has only had available funding for two to run any patrols at all. We need your helpClick here to see how you can help us |
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