St. Kitts and Nevis ‘walked out’ of IWC meeting
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - ST. KITTS AND NEVIS was one of the twenty countries who ‘walked’ out of The International Whaling Commission meeting in Jersey on Thursday.
Delegations who abandoned the room when the Chair called for voting were: Japan, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, the Gambia, Iceland, Norway, Nauru, Mongolia, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Grenada, Kiribati, Morocco, Korea, Ghana, Palau, Togo, Tuvalu, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Lucia. Twenty countries led by Japan walked out of a meeting at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in order to block plans to approve a sanctuary that would protect whales in South America.
As a result of the walk-out, the meeting failed to reach the required number for a quorum, causing voting to be delayed until the 2012 meeting.
The proposal to create a sanctuary for whales in the South Atlantic was spearheaded by Brazil and Argentina. Currently there are two such whale havens, one in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica and the other in the Indian Ocean.
"The Sanctuary incorporates some important breeding grounds and migratory routes for whale species in southern hemisphere", says Sue Fisher, anti-whaling lead for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).
The walk-out has been called “a procedural trick” by Japan and the pro-whaling countries to ensure that the sanctuary would not come into being immediately.
A deep seated divide has existed between pro-whaling countries led by countries like Japan, Iceland and Norway who have traditionally hunted whales as part of their culture and whale-hunting now plays a key role in their economy, and anti-whaling countries.
The anti-whaling countries have objected to whale hunting on the grounds that there is ‘overfishing’ of whales and that killing of whales is inhumane.
Countries in Africa and the Caribbean, for whom whaling is not an economic activity, have been accused of being ‘bought’ by Japan with developmental aid. These countries claim that whale stocks are no longer endangered and that they pose a danger to them when they devour their fish stocks on which they depend for a livelihood.
They accuse the anti-whaling nations of using emotion and not factual research in their arguments and of trying to suppress ancient whale hunting cultures. They also claim that IWC has not fulfilled some of the obligations agreed to in previous meetings.
However, officials of the IWC have stated that in the past months they have worked towards reaching a compromise between the followers and opponents of whaling within the IWC and the atmosphere had improved significantly.
A proposal by the United Kingdom to clean up the practices of the Commission had been adopted at this 62nd IWC meeting which until the walk out had been described as “progressive” and “successful”.
The International Whaling Commission consists of 89 countries and is a global forum charged with both protecting and overseeing the hunting of whales.
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