The Fisherfolk Movement of the Philippines is a coalition of five national federations and ten independent organizations from the Siaz(?) and Mindanao regions of the Philippines. The Fisherfolk Movement envisions an empowered fisherfolk and a sustainable community where fisherfolk women and men are active participants in their political, economic and cultural development. Its mission is to unite the artesenal fishers in the managing and nurturing of coastal resources and enforcing the right of women, toward the development of the Philippines fishing industry and towards peaceful and dynamic coastal communities. The Fisherfolk Movement, through its campaign of capacity building is now working towards the mobilization of the world fisheries sector to advance the agenda towards one sustainable fishing development industry program. Pushing for land use rights and developing the Fisherfolk Movement as a campaign centre effectively working towards rehabilitation, conservation and protection of fishery resources. We are also working towards pushing for land use rights, contributing to the empowerment of marginalized women and men of coastal communities. There are two major issues in our campaign.

In 2002 there were national consultations of the fisherfolk united on two major issues. One is fish trade liberalization and effective management and subsidies for artesenal fishers of the Philippines. This is in the framework of the countries food security and food sovereignty is also compromised as we lose control of our fishing grounds. In 2002 the Philippine fishing exports reached to 4.15.5 million dollars. In the same year fisher imports reached 89.9 million dollars. This data does not include all illegally imported fish products. Although the Philippine government regulates the importation of fish, smuggling and undocumented and illegal forms of fish importation have been reported. Instead(?) of the WTO, multinational and transnational corporations will intensify its effort to control natural resources under the guise of direct financial investments. To take advantage from sectors such as farming, forestry and fishing. In multinational corporations agenda are the elimination of policies that assure livelihood and protection and subservience over new multilateral and environmental agreements. The WTO rules.

So the fisherfolk movement needs to reach out to other fishers outside of the Philippines for these globalization policies. We belong to the network fish for justice being held in Southeast Asia. In September 2005 we held national consultations of artesenal fisherfolk in Jacarta. We created the Southeast Asia fisherfolk movement. In Jacarta we declared at the Southeast Asia fisherfolk movement that the WTO must be out of fisheries. When we come back to the Philippines, we launched an anti-globalization campaign that was focused on anti-aquaculture for rural development program. This aquaculture for rural development program focused on aquaculture because the government claims that aquaculture is the best way to secure our country, or to make sure that we have food security. It is the opposite. The fishers experience more poverty because we are dislocated from our livelihoods, from our settlements because of this program. For us women, the impact of this aquaculture, there is one component that is called the Memphis(?) breeding program. Instead of the women who gather fry(?) from the sea, our delete with our source of livelihood(???) A national and regional campaign coincided with the WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December 2005. Southeast Asia had a parade against globalization here. It seeks to unite and consolidate the regional fishers position regarding the debate on fisheries, trade liberalization… (brief cut off of sound)

We also held parades on Lake Geneva during the general council meeting of the WTO. Every local organization did their best to address the local issues in their capacity. The different local issues were illegal fishing, settlement issues and mining. The forms of addressing this is through dialogue, local government, and there are some project programs, like the Fishers who Implement Law Enforcement. The key difficulties in our campaign are the aquaculture development program and other government policies and militarization. There are members of fisherfolk organizations that are being harassed and being killed. In fact, in December 2005, a woman leader of our fisherfolk was killed when she left our conference place. The extrajudicial killing is going on. I cannot go to my province because I am run off by the military.

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The speeches from Regaining Control of the Commons: WSF 2007 are provided for information and educational purposes. The transcription has been undertaken on a volunteer basis. Due to resource limitations we are unable to provide a complete transcription. We apologise for the breaks in the text.

Disclaimer: The view in this and the other articles do not (neccessarily) represent the position or views of Friends of the Earth Australia nor Friends of the Earth International.