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38 inspectors from 13 countries in Africa followed a three-week FAO international course on Fisheries Port Inspections in support of the Agreement on Port State Measures, held in Europe’s biggest fishing port – Vigo, Spain – between the 13 – 30 October. 

Delivered in French by experts from FAO and the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, this course helped strengthen the day-to-day capacity of fisheries inspectors from Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Gabon, Guinea, Djibouti, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Senegal, Seychelles and Tunisia with a stronger theoretical and practical knowledge on implementing the FAO Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA) effectively.

The course participants acquired detailed working knowledge of the international legal frameworks which support the PSMA and are now fully capable to prepare in detail and carry out actual PSMA inspections, in an ethical, effective, and efficient manner.

Lectures and practical exercises given include the topics of public international law, the Law of the Sea, fisheries law, fisheries management, international instruments to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance, inspection procedures and methodology, fisheries law enforcement, as well as training about FAO information technology systems which can further assist them in their work.

This intensive course forms part of the Global Training Programme developed by FAO under its Global Capacity Development Programme to support the implementation of the PSMA.

This is the seventh time that FAO delivered this course since the development of its Global Training Programme.

Funding for the delivery of this course was provided by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the French Ministry of Ecology, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries of the Republic of Korea, and the European Union, with the technical cooperation of the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA) and the Vigo Port Authority.