Verifying and improving states’ compliance with their international fisheries law obligations

At the global level there are no centralized and comprehensive mechanisms to verify whether states respect their international fisheries law obligations. Recently developed procedures encourage compliance with each type of obligation: they are included in the Food and Agriculture Organization Flag State Guidelines and the Port State Measures Agreement, or take the form of regional fisheries management organizations’ performance reviews. No procedure exists to assess compliance for obligations as a coastal state. However, even the mechanisms that have been set up suffer from some shortcomings due to their voluntary nature, the absence of harmonized criteria to use as a benchmark, or the absence of an obligation to use external experts. Voluntary guidelines and schemes have, in the past, opened the path toward comprehensive and binding procedures, such as in the shipping sector; one can hope that, similarly, a centralized and multilateral review of all states' obligations in the field of fisheries is in the making.