Key fish stocks off the West African coast are currently overexploited, raising biological alarm-bells and threatening the socioeconomic well-being of regional inhabitants. International law obliges states to cooperate towards the sustainable use of fisheries in all waters, as reflected in the fisheries management policy of the European Union (EU). To date, however, these legal regimes have failed to secure the goal of sustainable fishing. This is particularly so in West African coastal waters, where various foreign fleets (including of the EU) enjoy access in terms of legally sanctioned arrangements. In this article I investigate the failure of international law to facilitate the realization of sustainable fisheries in these waters, referring to EU - Senegal fisheries relations as an illustrative case study. In doing this, I discuss the difficulties of sustainable fisheries management in light of their common resource nature and outline the legal responses to these challenges. Drawing on empirical research, I identify the manner in which the international system sanctions unsustainable fisheries relations between Western nations and developing coastal states and argue that the regime must be re- crafted (together with the domestic systems shaped by it) to better facilitate interactions that are not exploitative but rather genuinely cooperative towards the goal of sustainable fisheries.
