"Any majority for whaling at this meeting will be bought, not won," said Swaziland RPCV Fred O'Regan, president of IFAW
IWC Opens at Crossroads: Whale Conservation or Corruption?
7/19/2004 12:10:00 PM
To: National Desk
Contact: Patrick Ramage of IFAW at the Hilton Hotel, Room 39, 001-508-776-0027 or pramage@ifaw.org, Web: http://www.ifaw.org
SORRENTO, Italy, July 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- As the 56th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) opened today, the future of the Commission itself is in danger according to IFAW (the International Fund for Animal Welfare http://www.ifaw.org ). IFAW and other conservation groups fear aggressive vote buying and pressure tactics by Japan may result in the global body moving away from whale conservation for the first time in three decades.
"Any majority for whaling at this meeting will be bought, not won," said Fred O'Regan, president of IFAW and a delegate at the Sorrento meeting. "The fact is, if vote-buying were to stop, the IWC would have a massive pro-whale majority. Japan can't recruit countries with the power of its arguments, so it relies on the power of its currency. If Japan succeeds, this meeting will mark the first time an international convention has been hijacked by a single country and could lead to treaty busting in other international conventions."
For the past several years, Japan has openly targeted developing countries in what its officials have call a global "vote consolidation" program. Under the Japanese program, new IWC members from Africa, the Caribbean and the South Pacific have been recruited to vote with Japan in the IWC in return for development assistance and fisheries aid.
In the weeks before the Sorrento meeting, Cote d'Ivoire, Mauritania, Surinam and Tuvalu all joined the IWC and are expected to vote with Japan. Other countries have been pressured by Japan to abstain or remain absent from the IWC meeting. "Holding IWC countries hostage in return for urgently needed development assistance is wrong and Japan should stop it," O'Regan said.
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For more on the ongoing IWC meeting and IFAW's whale campaign go to http://www.ifaw.org.
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