Human Rights and Social Responsibility Case Study

One of the FisheryProgress Human Rights and Social Responsibility Policy's (HRSR Policy) early adopters is CeDePesca and its partners in the Peru anchovy small-scale FIP. The FIP is now meeting Requirements 1.2-1.5 of the HRSR Policy.

Gabriela McLean, Deputy Executive Director at CeDePesca, talked about the FIP's decision to meet the policy requirements early. "CeDePesca was keen to see how the HRSR Policy could be implemented in different contexts and scales. This FIP addresses a small-scale fishery and includes processing companies that do not own fishing vessels as partners - a unique context that is common for other FIPs in Latin America and the Caribbean."

One of the FIP's most notable achievements was developing adequate grievance mechanisms for the FIP's fishers in collaboration with a company that supplies the FIP partners. Gabriela noted, "We detected that the FIP partners had grievance mechanisms aimed at workers, but their supplier did not have a grievance mechanism aimed at the fishers. Together, we designed a grievance mechanism for the fishing crew. The mechanism is simple and there is room for improvement, but it is now available to fishers and earlier this year we hosted a series of workshops at the supplier's headquarters to inform 70 skippers and crew members of the new mechanism and how it works. We also let them know that their suggestions will be used to improve the mechanism in the future."

Next, the FIP is focused on integrating its new FIP partner by updating its vessel list and finding out what grievance mechanisms are available to the fishers. In addition, the FIP partners will begin work to draw from their existing commitments to human rights and social responsibility to draft a public policy statement for the FIP.

Gabriela noted there is still work to do but thinks the FIP's efforts clearly show that the HRSR Policy has the potential to influence behavior in FIP supply chains. "While all supply chains have different challenges, we believe our FIP's efforts to meet address social responsibility is a very encouraging example, and we hope others feel the same way."