ICELAND FISHERS WIN TEHIR RIGHTS AGAINST ITQ SYSTEM

I am privileged to receive numereous letters related to fisheries which are very important to learn some thing. Specially, who ever fight for the rights of the fisher people in the world.
I got the following message from Helan Garland of USA who is helping WFFP at UN head quarters at New York city. This is very interesting story as the ITQ system is one of the instruments use to privatize the fish resources all over the world. It is good to see that Icelandic fishermen have won their case based on International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, number [CCPR/C/91/D/1306/2004]. This would be a preceding for the small scale fishers who are loosing their fishing rights all over the world.

I am sharing this with you all for your information.
Herman

Draft: March 10, 2009
Iceland’s ITQ system has been challenged repeatedly in court. The first case concerned the manner in which Iceland initially grantedfishing licenses; the government distributed licenses to only those people who owned vessels during the short period November 1982 to October 1993. In the Valdimar case, a fisherman filed a case after he was denied a fishing license and catch quota because he did not own a boat during this period. In December 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to restrict the right to fish to the small group of people who were fishing during a restricted period of time. In response to the decision, the government of Iceland revised the fisheries management law to allow fishing licenses to be granted to all new vessels, with or without quotas, but did not change the ITQ system.
Two years later, another fisherman challenged the ITQ system in the Vatneyri case. This time the Supreme Court sided with the Ministry of Fisheries and found that ITQ system was legal and the government could make permanent allocation of quotas to a restricted group of people.
In 2001, fishermen Erlingur Sveinn Haraldsson and Orn Snaevar Sveinsson challenged the ITQ system again. The two fishermen had purchased a boat in 1998 but were unable to obtain a quota despite repeated applications for catch entitlements. They were able to lease a quota but paid such an exorbitant rental fee that they faced bankruptcy. In September 2001, the fishermen wrote to the Ministry of Fisheries and declared that they intended to fish without quotas and planned to challenge the ITQ system in court. After the fishermen broke the law, they were charged with fishing without a quota. Haraldsson and Sveinsson filed a claim challenging the constitutionality of the ITQ system but the Supreme Court of Iceland ruled that the quota system was legal.
After losing their case in Iceland, the fishermen filed a claim with the United Nations Human Rights Committee. They alleged that Iceland’s ITQ system violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights because the system forced them to pay money to a privileged group of citizens, the owners of fishing quotas, in order to pursue their occupation. In October 2007, the Committee ruled that Iceland’s ITQ system did violate international law. In its written decision, the Committee reasoned that although Iceland’s Fisheries Management Act stated that the fishing banks around Iceland were the common property of the nation, the ITQ system transformed the right to use and exploit public property into individual property. The committee found that “the property entitlement privilege accorded permanently to the original quota owners…is not based on reasonable grounds.” The Committee further argued that allocated quotas that were no longer used by their original holders should revert to the State for allocation to new quota holders in accordance with fair and equitable criteria. The UN ruled that the two fishermen should be compensated for their damages and that Iceland should take measures to give effect to the Committee’s decision. As of this date, the Government of Iceland has neither paid damages nor changed its ITQ system to comply with the UN’s decision.