ALIFA Salutes Collective Resistance of Fisherwomen for Recognition, Representation, Rights and Resources
napm india
Feminist Movements in Firm Solidarity with Fisherwomen’s Struggles!
ALIFA Salutes Collective Resistance of Fisherwomen for
Recognition, Representation, Rights and Resources
5th Dec, 2025: ALIFA – NAPM (All India Feminist Alliance - National Alliance of People’s Movements), a pan-India collective of feminist, grassroots organizations and individuals extends unwavering solidarity to the struggles of fisherwomen and fisher communities across India and the world, as the five-week international campaign (from 5th Nov to 10th Dec), spearheaded by the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) and endorsed by the National Forum of Fishworkers (NFF) in India, amplifies their voices and collective vision. As a feminist movement fully committed to fisher women’s rights, we feel the 5 week-based themes are inter-connected and of immense value to emancipatory struggles; including Gender Rights & Freedom from Violence (5th - 11th Nov); Asserting Fisher Identity (12th - 18th Nov); Community & Customary Rights (19th - 25th Nov); Protect Waters; Protect Life (26th Nov - 2 Dec); Fisher Rights as Human Rights (3rd- 10th Dec).
The campaign which began exactly a month ago on 5th Nov, is also significant because it marks the first International Fisherwomen's Day, a year after the historic India Fisherwomen's Assembly held on 5th November, 2024 at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Rooted in decades of collective struggle, the fisherwomen’s campaign builds on the powerful declaration of fisherwomen in India and across continents that women are not merely dependents or invisible labourers. They are fishers, defenders of commons, stewards of fragile ecosystems, and leaders of transformative socio-ecological movements.
Fisherwomen’s struggles and rights must therefore stand at the heart of international debates on food sovereignty, climate and gender justice, and community rights. The campaign is along the lines of generations of feminist labour resistance. Across coasts, markets, mangroves, and commons, fisherwomen have navigated the entrenched forces of caste, gender, patriarchy, capitalism, and state apathy. Their movement speaks to the same tradition that shapes global working-women’s struggles, reminding us that the fight for justice needs to extend to the oceans, seas, rivers and all water bodies. We recognize with pride that fisherwomen’s struggles are a manifestation of some of the most powerful feminist struggles, in India and globally, against entrenched patriarchal and capitalist systems of exploitation.
We acknowledge the historical injustice and invisibilization of fisherwomen’s contributions to the fisher community, and the issue of disproportionately low access to rights, services, schemes, and well-being. Fisherwomen harvest, dry, process, and sell fish; repair nets; defend coasts; negotiate storms and erosion; sustain communities during crises and have been at the forefront of familial care, kinships and community resilience. Yet, state policies, marine laws, fisheries boards, and to an extent, even fish worker collectives and unions have often ignored or marginalised them. The struggles of millions of fisherwomen is thus, as much a global feminist, ecological, and human-rights struggle.
We fully support the demand of fisherwomen that they be represented as equitable decision-makers in all spaces and not just as token voices in the decisions that directly impact them. The fisherwomen’s collective assertion calls for full recognition as workers, leaders, and rights-holders. We endorse the comprehensive charter of demands, as articulated by the WFFP Women’s Assembly and endorsed by NFF. These include:
1. Equal representation and leadership of fisher women in all government bodies, cooperatives, and community institutions.
2. Recognition of women as full rights-holders in all fisheries laws, policies, and official statistics.
3. Protection of inland, coastal, marine rights; ensuring secure access to waters, coasts, resources.
4. No forced land or coastal acquisition in the name of development or conservation.
5. Inclusion in all post-disaster and climate compensation mechanisms, recognising women’s work and losses.
6. Comprehensive social protection, including accident insurance, maternity benefits, health care.
7. Fair markets, first-sale rights and access to credit, eliminating middle-men exploitation.
8. Gender-justice education and awareness programmes, engaging both women and men.
9. A total ban on destructive aquaculture, deep-sea mining, and coastal militarisation.
10. Recognition of traditional knowledge and community-based conservation, led by women.
11. Community control over coasts, forests, seas, reaffirming collective ownership of the commons.
We salute the global fisherwomen’s struggle that has bravely been challenging capitalist enclosure of water and land, resisting the ‘Blue Economy’, insisting on and demanding community sovereignty, ecological justice, and gender equity. We also denounce industrial aquaculture, deep-sea mining, large-scale port and harbour development, privatization of coasts and waters which are direct threats to fisherwomen’s rights and ecological sustainability. We strongly condemn the state repression on fisher movements, incarceration and persecution of fishermen on high seas and demand their immediate release.
The oceans, rivers, and wetlands, first and foremost, belong to those who live with them, and those who care for them. Fisherwomen are custodians of commons, whose labour, knowledge, and leadership sustain food sovereignty, ecological balance, and human dignity. These are people who have for centuries known how to safeguard their waters, coasts, ecosystems, and species and they should be recognised as right-holders, not profiteering corporate entities of governments.
ALIFA stands by every fisherwoman who has laboured through storms, discrimination, and uncertainty, and yet, continues to defend her waters with resilience and demands that their effort be recognized, acknowledged, celebrated, respected, and supported. Their leadership expands our understanding of feminist politics and climate justice, bringing in perspectives of community-rooted knowledge, and lived experiences of women at the forefront of ecological systems and social justice movements.
We believe that the rights of traditional and sustainable fisher people cannot be realised without fisherwomen being at the forefront of this movement, and nor can true transformation towards a just, equitable, and peaceful world happen without women, especially from marginalized backgrounds, in positions of leadership. We stand in solidarity with the movements that protect oceans, coastlines and inland waters as living commons and we commit to amplifying the voices of fisherwomen and their collectives, supporting their struggles, and building alliances across all communities towards resisting and dismantling the systems threatening people and this planet.
Zindabad to the Sheroes of the Shores!
Zindabad to the Fisherwomen’s Struggles for Recognition, Representation, Rights
and Resources!
Issued by: All India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA–NAPM)
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