Pacta Tertiis and Regional Fisheries Management Mechanisms: The IUU Fishing Concept as an Illegitimate Short-Cut to a Legitimate Goal1. (2nd October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Serdy, Andrew
• Is Part Of: Ocean development and international law. Volume 48:Number 3/4(2017)
• Page Start: 345
• Page End: 364
• Publication Date: 2017-10-02
• Subjects: EU IUU Regulation 1005/2008 -- FAO International Plan of Action against IUU Fishing -- IUU fishing -- Pacta tertiis -- UN Fish Stocks Agreement; Law of the sea -- Periodicals; Marine resources conservation -- Law and legislation -- Periodicals; 341.45
• DOI: 10.1080/00908320.2017.1349525
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0090-8320

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article considers how international management of fisheries under the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement and regional fisheries management organizations is affected by one of the basic principles of the law of treaties: the rule pacta tertiis nec nocent nec prosunt, by which international fisheries regulations as treaty-based obligations bind only the parties to the treaty concerned and not third states without their consent. It is shown that the relatively recent concept of IUU (illegal, unreported, and unregulated) fishing, often seen as a way to circumvent this problem, is flawed as a solution, largely because the leading global and European Union instruments in which it is embodied in effect equate unregulated fishing with illegal fishing in a way that pays insufficient heed to the constraints of the pacta tertiis rule.