Organized crime in the fishery industry that endangers stocks, exploits labor and robs states of billions of dollars must be fought. This is according to officials meeting in Copenhagen on Thursday, March 23.
Around 600 million people worldwide depend on the sector for their livelihoods.
Government ministers and delegates attended a conference by the Blue Justice Initiative. The conference was backed by 60 coastal states including Brazil, South Africa, Norway and Indonesia. The goal was to jointly eliminate transnational crime in global fishery.
Many developing nations lack the basic tracking systems needed to understand the latitude of the problems, the Norwegian fisheries ministry said.
The transnational nature of organized crime makes law enforcement even harder. It can be difficult to prove that a crime took place within the maritime borders of a particular country.
“One thing is the tracking, getting the data, analyzing it, being able to catch the criminals, but then you need law enforcement in the country to take it further,” Norway’s development minister, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, told Reuters.
Source: marinelink.com
