MSC overview of labour risk management practices

This collaborative paper provides an overview of labour risk management practices ‘reported’ by fisheries certified to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Fisheries Standard.

As well as a range of risk-mitigation tools, the paper discusses the benefits of having common principles that can be adapted to local contexts. It also highlights the challenge of addressing social issues that often come under the responsibility of the vessel’s flag state rather than authorities where the fishing is taking place.

This paper aims to provide an overview of measures used to mitigate the risk of forced and child labour in fisheries certified to the MSC Fisheries Standard, representing over 15% of the world’s marine capture fishery production and a range of geographies, gear types, scales, target species, and regulatory contexts. MSC certificate holders have been required to submit forced and child labour statements as part of the Standard’s requirements since 2018 and are required to make these publicly available. Analysis of these statements provided a wealth of information on the mechanisms by which a subset of arguably the world’s best managed fisheries work to mitigate the risk of forced and child labour in their operations. Further, this analysis supported the creation of a conceptual framework to map out and evaluate practical labour risk management mechanisms within fisheries, categorised by the roles of different actors and the type of intervention.