The full text can be found here.A United Nations-sponsored proposal to protect and promote small-scale fisheries has run into a problem, with Canada emerging as the lone dissenting voice in a dispute that may have a connection to policy on the Middle East.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had nearly unanimous support among 98 countries for guidelines to protect family-run, independent fleets that seek access to species in an increasingly industrialized fishery.
But Canada is at odds with other nations, because of a wording change that calls for the protection of fishermen "in situations of occupation," meaning any occupied territory or region.
Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs objects to the wording change.
While the Israeli-Palestinian situation is not specifically mentioned in the addition made by Mauritania, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson called the amendment a needlessly political move, and Canada thus will not support it. [Mauritania shares a border with Western Sahara, which is in dispute with neighbouring Morocco.]
Christian Brun, director of the Maritime Fishermen's Union, agrees the amendment is provocative, but still wants Canada to approve the deal for the sake of small fishing fleets.
"This is just a principled issue," he said.
"They can make their point somewhere else ... because what is at risk here is that the document might just not exist at all."
Some details on the dispute from last February indicates that it was indeed the Arab nations that added the wording, and refused to remove it:
The main reservation of the Canadian delegation was the "Politically Sensitiveness" of the issue. There were several compromise texts were proposed by USA, Ecuador and Argentinian delegations which did not acceptable to either Canadian delegation or many of the Arab World delegations alternately. Finally, the proposed two texts were bracketed and decided to send to 31st COFI session which will be held in July 2014.The people behind this proposal are frustrated that this issue to protect family fishing enterprise, that they feel passionately about, is being politicized and is endangered because of Canada's principled stand. The pressure on Canada to overlook the anti-Israel paragraph for the "better good" must be enormous.
It is interesting that Canada alone is objecting to this clearly anti-Israel addition to the text, and not the US.
(h/t Manny)