PHOTO: NaFAA boss Emma Glassco
The Liberian government through the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Authority, (NaFAA) in collaboration with the Africa Legal Support Facility (ALSF) discloses the start of a five-day international fishery capacity building training workshop in Monrovia.
According to a NaFAA press release the five days training will focus on the negotiation of fishery agreements and licenses, a NaFAA press release says.
The training program, which begins from the 23-27 of May 2022, will bring together participants from government line ministries, agencies and the local media.
The week-long international fishery capacity building training will be facilitated by Africa Legal Support Facility (ALSF) and will be financed by the African Development Bank.
Government ministries and agencies expected to participate in the international fisheries training are the National Port Authority, Environmental Protection Agency, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Justice, Maritime, and the Ministry of Agriculture among others. Three Liberian talk show host are expected form part of the training.
Participants at the training will be drilled through several topics including Fisheries access agreements & arrangements, access agreement types and the typical structure of an access agreement, the interests of African States, and the dominant fishing fleets, their strategies and tactics.
Other topics for discussion during the training include, regional co-operation and the minimum terms and conditions of access approach, management of access agreements by Coastal States and conservation and environmental issues.
At the same time other materials that will be briefly covered include, the Law of the Sea Convention, fish stocks agreement, FAO Compliance Agreement, FAO Port State Measures Agreement, FAO Code of Conduct, the Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) treaties and other instruments.
The release noted that a manual providing detailed information on each of these instruments and relevance to and application in the Liberian context will be provided to the participants.
Meanwhile, the facilitators, Africa Legal Support Facility (ALSF) is expected to provide tools to support Liberia with respect to, calculating and negotiating reference tonnage figures during negotiations with the European Union, calculating and negotiating the Rate of Return approach used by the Asian fleets, estimating the impacts of adding on foreign vessels to existing fishing capacity in the context of a fisheries management plan – this tool is particularly useful for calculating impacts at single foreign vessel level or at the level of a small or large fleet.
Three Liberian Talk Show Host from separate media entities were chosen to participate in the fishery negotiations training workshop.