51
4 Social Justice in the Context of Fisheries – A Governability Challenge
no-one’s property is less reassuri ng for indigenous small-scale fi shers. Will indigenous
peoples have the same rights to fi shing grounds as they do to forests and agricultural
land? The revised language may be seen as a necessary compromise in order to save
the Declaration. It is also more in line with the ILO 169’s position on the matter.
The Declaration proved to be a hard bargain, with the US, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand voting against it.
3 Nonetheless, the Declaration does contain important
principles regarding indigenous peoples’ rights to livelihoods, culture, natural
resources and self-determination. Although fi shing rights were deleted in the fi nal
text, they would be assumed under “territories and resources”. In the negotiations
leading up to the decision, the letter s in peoples was a dif fi cult one because it determines whether rights in question are individual or collective. In the fi nal text, however, the s was retained.
Since the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is drawn from
human rights legislation and principles that are universal, these rights have broader
relevance than the Declaration might suggest. Non-indigenous populations share
many of the same concerns and problems that the Declaration addresses. The statement of the civil society group presented at the Bangkok meeting actually reads as
a parallel declaration to that of indigenous peoples, and it may thus be a fi rst step
towards a general formal recognition of small-sale fi shing peoples’ human rights.
Even if declarations belong to what is called “soft law” and are therefore not as
binding as a UN convention, they do create political space for those concerned.
They also put pressure on governments to act upon them. If such a declaration is
what small-scale fi shing people opt for globally, a lesson from the process on the
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples is that one should be prepared for
a long haul. The Declaration took decades of struggle by the indigenous movement
before it was fi nalized.
Small-scale fi shing people depend on initiatives that work, and they need them
fast (Jentoft and Eide 2011 ) . Their communities and culture are not as resilient as
we tend to believe. Rather they are vulnerable and not easily restored once broken.
A culture lost is gone forever, as with bio-diversity or indigenous languages and
knowledge. As many at the FAO conference in Bangkok argued, a Declaration for
small-scale fi shing people’s human rights would be an instrument of committing
governments to secure the ‘rights to life’ of small-scale fi shing people.
Human rights principles, such as those inscribed in the UN Declaration for the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Bangkok statement, belong within the broader
and classic discussion pertaining to natural rights; the rights that are “natural” to
man. The idea is that people have inalienable rights, individually and collectively,
that cannot be changed by “positive law.” Philosophers like Aristotle, Rousseau,
Hobbes, Aquinas, Locke and others all debated these rights. Natural rights were also
invoked by the founding fathers and authors of the American constitution. In the
case of indigenous peoples, we also talk about collective rights; the right to exist as
a distinct people with a culture of its own. This further involves rights to maintain a
3 Their arguments for rejecting the Declaration can be found at http://www.en-wikipedia.org/wiki/
Declaration_on_the-Rights_of_Indigenous_Peoples
4 Social Justice in the Context of Fisheries – A Governability Challenge
no-one’s property is less reassuri ng for indigenous small-scale fi shers. Will indigenous
peoples have the same rights to fi shing grounds as they do to forests and agricultural
land? The revised language may be seen as a necessary compromise in order to save
the Declaration. It is also more in line with the ILO 169’s position on the matter.
The Declaration proved to be a hard bargain, with the US, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand voting against it.
3 Nonetheless, the Declaration does contain important
principles regarding indigenous peoples’ rights to livelihoods, culture, natural
resources and self-determination. Although fi shing rights were deleted in the fi nal
text, they would be assumed under “territories and resources”. In the negotiations
leading up to the decision, the letter s in peoples was a dif fi cult one because it determines whether rights in question are individual or collective. In the fi nal text, however, the s was retained.
Since the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is drawn from
human rights legislation and principles that are universal, these rights have broader
relevance than the Declaration might suggest. Non-indigenous populations share
many of the same concerns and problems that the Declaration addresses. The statement of the civil society group presented at the Bangkok meeting actually reads as
a parallel declaration to that of indigenous peoples, and it may thus be a fi rst step
towards a general formal recognition of small-sale fi shing peoples’ human rights.
Even if declarations belong to what is called “soft law” and are therefore not as
binding as a UN convention, they do create political space for those concerned.
They also put pressure on governments to act upon them. If such a declaration is
what small-scale fi shing people opt for globally, a lesson from the process on the
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples is that one should be prepared for
a long haul. The Declaration took decades of struggle by the indigenous movement
before it was fi nalized.
Small-scale fi shing people depend on initiatives that work, and they need them
fast (Jentoft and Eide 2011 ) . Their communities and culture are not as resilient as
we tend to believe. Rather they are vulnerable and not easily restored once broken.
A culture lost is gone forever, as with bio-diversity or indigenous languages and
knowledge. As many at the FAO conference in Bangkok argued, a Declaration for
small-scale fi shing people’s human rights would be an instrument of committing
governments to secure the ‘rights to life’ of small-scale fi shing people.
Human rights principles, such as those inscribed in the UN Declaration for the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Bangkok statement, belong within the broader
and classic discussion pertaining to natural rights; the rights that are “natural” to
man. The idea is that people have inalienable rights, individually and collectively,
that cannot be changed by “positive law.” Philosophers like Aristotle, Rousseau,
Hobbes, Aquinas, Locke and others all debated these rights. Natural rights were also
invoked by the founding fathers and authors of the American constitution. In the
case of indigenous peoples, we also talk about collective rights; the right to exist as
a distinct people with a culture of its own. This further involves rights to maintain a
3 Their arguments for rejecting the Declaration can be found at http://www.en-wikipedia.org/wiki/
Declaration_on_the-Rights_of_Indigenous_Peoples