DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2014.273
title: Thailand’s compliance with international standards against illegal, unreported and unregulated fisheries

description: The research contributes to the study on legal measures that Thailand compliance with Illegal, Unreporter and Unregulated (IUU) fishing problems. The research analyzes on the sufficiency of law in practicality of measures in such situations. This research contains meanings, terms, principles, and perspectives of IUU fishing and of course information about situations, problems and effects of IUU fishing to the world fishery, as well as in Thailand. Thailand is one of the top ranks in seafood distributor to the world particularly in EU, USA and Japan. The huge demand of fish globally makes the seafood industry sector in developed and developing country attempt to develop the fishing technology in order to increase the fish capture. Also, the outcome from the fast growth of population causing great demand of seafood product creates a new problem which is illegal fishery. Illegal Fishing occurs in every region and causes critical effect to the global fishery such as over-exploit fishing and becomes IUU fishing.IUU fishing in the sense of law that means the act that contravenes national or international law and regulation. Recent fact shows that Thailand Fishery Act B.E.2490 could not control IUU fishing conduct and it is not up-to-update. Ineffective legal measures to control fishing activity are the reason which brings significant problems. Also, this then becomes the national problem which makes the importer countries push the pressure on our export sectors. EU countries has announced to fight IUU fishing by complying all measures according with IPOA-IUU to prohibit all fishery product to get into the region. Therefore, IUU fishing could affect Thailand’s economy in general because export fishery products of Thailand are in the first ranks of EU. Our responsible sectors know and are concern about the IUU problem in Thailand but without effective legal measure to control all conducts then the problem is still unsolved. Thailand Fisheries Act B.E.2490 has not provided the effective measures to prevent, control and resolve IUU fisheries as the international country measures.It is obvious that we lack integrate management operation, then cooperating and cross functioning between competent authority should be considered as first priority to fight IUU fisheries. It makes a big loophole in order to control national vessels because of ineffective authorization system. Unauthorized fishing problems has brought an ineffective monitoring system of Flag state and cause illegal fishing methods. Therefore, the government amends the law and it was just enacted on 28 April B.E. 2558 to ensure that we are not refrain from action to prevent, deter, and eliminate IUU fishing. However, by the short period of time to amend the new Act, there are still some remaining issues which does not completely solve the problem such as the lack of cooperation with regional country or attending to the management organization.Fishery law has many dimensions to control whether flag state, port state and coastal state aspects including market state which is an important role to control and eliminate IUU fishing. Therefore, related legislations sector should consider on this issue to insert the new fishery act or enacting secondary law to fill the loophole in order to make all process of controlling, deterring and eliminating IUU fishing be completed effectively.In my opinion, Thailand needs to amend national law by deploying effective and suitable measures from the international agreement on the benefit of legal content, enforcement, cooperation with other states to support the technology of enforcement between the regions. The most important reason of deploying measures from the agreement is because its implementation will contribute to strengthen fisheries management and governance at all levels.  Moreover, we can raise our standard to have consistent legal measure with international level in order to get acceptance from other countries.