The relevance of human rights to socially responsible seafood

The persistence of human rights violations in global fisheries highlights the need to ensure seafood is not only environmentally sustainable but also socially responsible. However, there is no clear direction on how to achieve socially responsible seafood on the ground. We provide clarity by examining opportunities and challenges to implement socially responsible seafood through the framework of human rights, considering the most pertinent legal and policy instruments. We find that international, regional, and domestic legal regimes for protecting human rights can be more directly applied to combat social abuses and other harmful practices in the seafood supply chain. However, caution should be taken in gauging the “promise” of human rights, since these legal regimes often have inherent limitations and they are not expressly designed to promote socially responsible practices as a central objective.