March 2018 — Sandy Davies (Technical Director) and Mark Ssemakula (Project Officer) participated in a consultative workshop for the validation of the Framework for Institutional Collaboration on Monitoring, Control and Surveillance (MCS) in the South West Indian Ocean (SWIO) in Gaborone, Botswana from the 7th – 9th March 2018.
The Framework was prepared in response to requests made at a Technical Meeting of SADC Task Force on IUU fishing in May 2016. As a follow-up to those recommendations, the African Union Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) launched a study to develop a framework for institutional collaboration on MCS and strengthen or create platforms for information sharing in the SWIO. The workshop was organised to review and validate the draft framework for institutional collaboration on MCS and proposed mechanism for operationalization of this framework.
The meeting brought together relevant regional integration bodies, projects and other organizations. Ms Davies and Mr Ssemakula discussed the objectives and experiences of the FISH-i Africa Task Force initiative, using the case analysis to provide lesson learning and best practice to the process.
