The Sustainable Fisheries Management Project (SFMP) is a five-year initiative (2014 -2019)
with the goal of rebuilding targeted marine fish stocks that have seen major declines in
landings over the last decade, particularly the small pelagic fisheries that are important for
food security and are the mainstay of the small-scale fishing sector. The Coastal Resources
Center (URI-CRC) at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography leads
a consortium of partners tasked with an integrated suite of activities including:
a. Improved legal enabling conditions for implementing co-management use rights,
capacity and effort-reduction strategies.
b. Improved information systems and science-informed decision-making
c. Increased constituencies that provides the political will and public support necessary
to make the hard choices and changed behavior needed to rebuild Ghana’s marine
fisheries sector, feeding into applied management initiatives for targeted fisheries
ecosystems.
The SFMP also aims at building the capacity of the Regional Coordinating Councils (RCC)
and District Assemblies (DAs) in the CR and Western Region (WR) to improve marine
fisheries spatial planning and mainstream the development needs of climate- and
economically vulnerable fishing communities into their overall development plans, and to
provide communities with diversified livelihoods, including ways to obtain greater
profitability from fisheries value chains. Particular emphasis is placed on more efficient and
profitable fish smokers that have potential for significant scale-up. This element places a
strong focus on women and youth and utilizes local partners whose missions address the
needs of these target groups.
During the development of the SFMP proposal, focus group discussions were held in Moree
and other communities in CR. Participants in the discussion revealed that CLaT in fisheries
was a very prevalent issue. They revealed that children are reportedly sent to the Volta Lake
region to engage in dangerous fishing activities at a very tender age, and are hardly enrolled
in school. These children (under age 18) engage in hazardous fisheries work.
The Fisheries Commission and the Department of Social Welfare also highlighted the
problem of illegal child labor and trafficking in fishing in the region as a rather precarious
issue that needs addressing to safeguard the developmental potentials of children, Ghana’s
fisheries, promote good governance and socio-economic advancement of inhabitants within
the coastal belt of Ghana, especially in the Central Region.
In August 2013, the United Nations challenged Ghanaian authorities to focus on addressing
the root causes of slavery and child labor in the country. This was part of recommendations
made by the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Gulnara Shahinian,
following her visit to Ghana. She had observed that children, some as young as four years,
continue to be sent on fishing expeditions to perform some of the most dangerous work. They
are deprived of education and unpaid. She blamed the persistence of the practice on poverty,
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regional disparities, urging that the country must begin to focus on education and health
delivery to its citizenry.
These revelations informed and contributed to the design of the CLaT component for the
SFMP.