Declaration and Agreements of Havana

The communities of artisanal fishing, just like the communities of peasants are confronted with contradictions existing between the economic policies of free exchange and the aspects of sustainability of the environment, social equity, safety and food sovereignty.
Recent world statistics give a report on the important variations recorded in the fish consumption. Indeed, the industrialized countries require always more marine resources for their food. Thus groups or capital, represented by large multinational consortia, entered in war to obtain the monopoly of the market of fishing, and to make pressure on the developing countries and the States so that they adapt their national legislations to the requests of the capital and the trade. The communities of fishermen craftsmen lose more and more the access to their own resources. The international treaties, the agreements of free exchange, WTO and in general, the application of neoliberalist policies led to the privatization of the resources by multinational industries.
The communities of artisanal fishermen understand that it is not only about the crisis of a system but about a design of the world and life based on the worship of the market and technology. As a result, the artisanal fishermen, guards of the maritime inheritance of the world, rise to ratify the dignity of the fight for a responsible and interdependent world and propose an alliance with the peasants, the autochtones people and the civil society in order to exert the food sovereignty of the people, of all the people of the world. Face to the loss of their rights, with the development of the neoliberalist globalisation, the food insecurity and the environmental pollution, the organizations of artisanal fishermen will seek to work out strategies and to take common actions at the local, national, regional and international level for the total respect of their rights.