A meeting of the Technical Working Group on establishment of Regional Convention on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (IUUF) and its related Crimes was held in Indonesia’s Surabaya city on May 2-3. 

The meeting took place within the framework of the conference on building a regional convention on combating illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and fishery-related crimes (IUU conference). It brought together representatives from ASEAN member countries, excluding Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, along with those from the US, Australia, China and Timor-Leste. 

Based on opinions raised by the participating countries at the first and second IUU conferences in May and October 2016, Indonesia proposed changes in building regional IUU documents. 

Accordingly, Indonesia suggested the building of a regional cooperation agreement on combating fishery-related crimes. 

Delegates from Australia, the US, Timor-Leste, China and Vietnam highlighted the links between the future agreement with available international legal documents on cross-border crimes such as the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC) and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). 

Regarding the agreement’s content, they focused discussions on its objective, regional and international cooperation, how to build capacity of parties in enforcement, market measures and fisheries-related crimes. 

The participants stressed the need to boost regional and international cooperation in fighting cross-border crimes. However, they noted that the agreement should not overlap other international documents. 

Indonesia also proposed establishing a working group within the framework of the IUU conference. The proposal will be submitted to the third IUU conference scheduled for next August.

VNA