Human rights and neo-liberalism in small-scale fisheries: Conjoined priorities and processes

Recent advocacy of human rights approaches (HRA) for the governance of small-scale fisheries (SSF) in developing countries overlooks evidence that HRA facilitates a neo-liberal agenda. Further, this advocacy is seemingly uninformed by serious consideration of the extensive human rights literature. As a result, the essential relationship of human rights to neo-liberal philosophy and processes, as well as nation/state icons and institutional practices, remains hidden. Neither is it demonstrated that "development" was redefined within the neo-liberal context of the property-holding individual functioning efficiently within a market-imposed discipline, nor that this has been protected since the 1980s by having co-opted HRA. Paradoxically, the likely result of an HRA as promoted is a disruption of the very collective community cultural, economic and social values that provide the realistic ethical, moral and practical basis for implementing an effective and meaningful HRA. This essay examines and demonstrates how the HRA advances the cause of neo-liberal penetration into communities within the context of Western development practice and philosophy, its basis in neo-classical economics, and its congruence with neo-liberalism. The role of collective communal values is examined as an alternative for securing human rights. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.