Advancing Sustainable Seafood to End Human Suffering

Description

The Advancing Sustainable Seafood to End Human Suffering project seeks to strengthen governance across Indonesia’s seafood global value chains by promoting a human rights-centered approach to sustainable seafood. As international seafood trade becomes increasingly integrated into the global economy, Indonesia’s seafood industry has evolved into a complex transnational production network linking fishing vessel crews, seafood processing workers, suppliers, processors, multinational companies, logistics providers, certification bodies, and international retail markets. While this transformation has created significant economic opportunities for Indonesia as one of the world’s leading seafood producers, it has also exposed persistent governance challenges in ensuring that economic growth is accompanied by respect for human rights throughout the value chain.

Within these interconnected value chains, economic benefits, commercial risks, and responsibilities are not always distributed equitably. Actors with greater access to global markets, branding, sustainability standards, and international buyers often possess stronger influence over sourcing practices and commercial relationships. Meanwhile, fishing vessel crews and seafood processing workers—who constitute the foundation of global seafood production—continue to face disproportionate risks, including exploitative working conditions, labour rights violations, gender-based violence and discrimination, limited access to grievance and remedy mechanisms, and inadequate opportunities to participate in decisions affecting their livelihoods. Strengthening Business and Human Rights (BHR) therefore represents a critical pathway toward building more responsible, transparent, inclusive, and equitable governance throughout Indonesia’s seafood value chains.

To address these challenges, the project is built around three mutually reinforcing pillars. First, it strengthens the Business and Human Rights ecosystem by mapping civil society organizations, analysing key stakeholders, and fostering strategic partnerships among organizations working to advance human rights across Indonesia’s seafood global value chains. Second, it establishes a Knowledge Hub as a shared platform for generating, managing, and disseminating knowledge through research, policy briefs, thematic discussions, capacity-building initiatives, and learning exchanges focused on Business and Human Rights, seafood value chain governance, and the protection of fishing vessel crews. Third, the project promotes multi-stakeholder dialogue and policy engagement through national forums, participation in regional and international platforms, and the development of policy recommendations that support the integration of Business and Human Rights principles into Indonesia’s seafood governance framework. Together, these interventions strengthen the linkages between knowledge generation, institutional capacity, collaborative learning, and policy change, creating the enabling conditions for long-term systemic transformation.

The project adopts a collaborative approach that brings together civil society organizations, labour unions, fishing vessel crew organizations, government agencies, seafood companies, academic institutions, certification bodies, international organizations, and other relevant stakeholders through processes of collective learning and multi-stakeholder engagement. By fostering trust, strengthening coordination, and facilitating knowledge exchange across sectors, the project aims to develop collective responses to the human rights challenges embedded within Indonesia’s seafood global value chains.

Ultimately, the project seeks to contribute to a stronger Business and Human Rights ecosystem across Indonesia’s seafood global value chains through enhanced civil society collaboration, evidence-based knowledge production, strengthened institutional capacity, and expanded multi-stakeholder dialogue. More broadly, it aims to support the transformation of Indonesia’s seafood sector by ensuring that global competitiveness is accompanied by respect for human rights, protection of fishing vessel crews, effective access to remedy, and responsible business conduct as fundamental pillars of sustainable seafood governance.

Funding

This program is supported by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation for the period from 1 April 2026 to 31 October 2027, with a total funding amount of USD 74,875.