PRINCIPAL AUTHORITY

COFI, COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES

Meetings | Reports

WHAT IS COFI?
The Committee on Fisheries (COFI), a subsidiary body of the FAO Council, was established by the FAO Conference at its Thirteenth Session in 1965. The Committee presently constitutes the only global inter-governmental forum where major international fisheries and aquaculture problems and issues are examined and recommendations addressed to governments, regional fishery bodies, NGOs, fishworkers, FAO and international community, periodically on a world-wide basis. COFI has also been used as a forum in which global agreements and non-binding instruments were negotiated.

COFI membership is open to any FAO Member and non-Member eligible to be an observer of the Organization. Representatives of the UN, UN bodies and specialized agencies, regional fishery bodies, international and international non-governmental organizations participate in the debate, but without the right to vote.

The Committee has held 31 sessions. The First Session in 1966, and thereafter annually till 1975. Since 1977 the sessions have been held biennially.

COFI may establish sub-committees on certain specific issues, for example the

• COFI Sub-Committee on Trade
• COFI Sub-Committe on Aquaculture

Such subsidiary bodies meet in the intersessional period of the parent Committee.

FUNCTIONS OF COFI

The two main functions of COFI are to review the programmes of work of FAO in the field of fisheries and aquaculture and their implementation, and to conduct periodic general reviews of fishery and aquaculture problems of an international character and appraise such problems and their possible solutions with a view to concerted action by nations, by FAO, inter-governmental bodies and the civil society. The Committee also reviews specific matters relating to fisheries and aquaculture referred to it by the Council or the Director-General of FAO, or placed by the Committee on its agenda at the request of Members, or the United Nations General Assembly.

In its work, the Committee supplements rather than supplants other organizations working in the field of fisheries and aquaculture.