‘Slavery is not yet ended’, said Archbishop Sanchez Sorondo of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences Slavery at the 24th World Congress of the Apostleship of the Sea (AoS) in Taiwan. The Congress titled, ‘Caught in the Net’ focused specifically on the welfare and lives of fishermen around the world.
Cardinal Turkson, who heads the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, in which AoS sits in the Vatican, noted that this aspect of AoS’s work is directed to nearly 38 million people engaged in fishing, where abuse can often go unseen out at sea.
“A culture of indifference prevents us from seeing sea slaves and fishermen who are modern day refugees living and working in lawless seas,” said Cardinal Bo of Myanmar.
Amongst the experts who addressed the Congress was Sebastian Matthew from The International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, who explained that in many poorer countries small scale fishermen often operate at little more than subsistence level.
The United Nations, ILO Work in Fishing Convention, which comes into force this November, was warmly welcomed as a means of improving the welfare of fishermen. Cardinal Bo noted that currently 25 million fishermen have little or no legal protection, which will change with the implementation of the fishing convention.
Concluding, the Congress Fr Bruno Ciceri, AoS’s international secretary, highlighted three priorities for AoS’s work with fishermen; Ensuring port chaplains visit fishing ports, raising awareness amongst consumers of human rights abuses in the fish supply chain, and responding to Cardinal Bo’s ‘SoS to AoS’ to establish an AoS ship visiting team in Myanmar.
