Mauritania achieves ‘Compliant’ status under the FiTI Standard
9 May 2025. Mauritania has become the second country globally to achieve an overall compliant status in implementing the FiTI Standard. The FiTI International Board congratulates Mauritania on this significant achievement, which demonstrates that all necessary aspects of the validation requirements have been met for the period under validation. The outcome of Mauritania’s second validation underlines the progress the country has made toward achieving transparency in its fisheries sector management.
Good governance of natural resources cannot be accomplished without up-to-date, trustworthy, publicly available data. Mauritania’s marine fishing sector makes a significant contribution to its national economy. It also generates a substantial number of jobs. The government and other stakeholders have recognised the need for transparency to ensure the future sustainability of its marine fisheries and to enhance participatory governance. Their commitment to implementing the FiTI is building such a pathway.
Mauritania’s government supported the FiTI from the outset of the initiative, as a global multi-stakeholder group was developing its Standard. Later, in February 2016, Mauritania became the first country to join the FiTI and has consistently upheld its commitment to the initiative since then. This reflects the country’s focus on progressively and continuously improving transparency in fisheries information. Therefore, it is with great satisfaction that the FiTI announces the positive results of the second validation.
Validations safeguard the initiative’s integrity by holding all FiTI implementing countries to the same global standard while also considering each country’s economic, cultural, and political landscape under the principle of ‘contextual mindfulness’. This offers a unique opportunity to conduct an objective and standardised verification of a country’s past performance. The purpose of validations is also to identify lessons learned, enhancement opportunities, and corrective actions to strengthen the operational effectiveness of the FiTI implementation. Finally, they ensure the initiative’s overall impact on the sustainable management of a country’s marine fisheries.
On 9 May 2025, the Chair of the FiTI International Board, Dr Valeria Merino, shared the Validation Statement with Mauritania’s Ministry of Fisheries, Maritime Infrastructures and Ports (MPIMP) and the country’s FiTI National Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG), officially communicating, on behalf of the Board, that Mauritania had achieved an overall ‘Compliant’ status in implementing the FiTI Standard during the validation time frame (April 2022 – July 2024).
On behalf of the FiTI International Board, the Chair congratulated the Government of Mauritania, the MPIMP (acting as the FiTI’s Lead Ministry for Mauritania), the FiTI National Lead, the members of Mauritania’s National Multi-Stakeholder Group, and the National Secretariat. Dr Merino stated, “This achievement reflects the country’s sustained commitment to fisheries transparency, which has elicited a positive response, not only within the fisheries sector but also more broadly. The FiTI International Board is confident that Mauritania, inspired by this significant result, will maintain and reinforce its efforts to strengthen and institutionalise its fisheries sector transparency and participatory governance further, thus ensuring that the country’s compliant status in the FiTI is retained over time.”
The Independent Validation demonstrated that the country maintained and increased the amount of information available on government websites and improved the quality of data in the public domain. National and international stakeholders highly valued the annual FiTI Reports, and there is general recognition in Mauritania that the FiTI process has led to increased transparency. Also, stakeholders in Mauritania expressed their expectation that the FiTI process would continue and hoped it would lead to policy improvements and more sustainable fisheries management.
The Chair also communicated that the Board had identified several opportunities for further improvement, which were included in the Compliance Statement’s corrective actions section.
Mauritania’s official ‘Validation Package’, which consists of the Board’s Compliance Statement, the report of the Independent Validator, Mr Stefaan Depypere, and the Baseline Assessment Report from the FiTI International Secretariat, can be downloaded here: