Blue Justice 2024: A Year of Consolidation and Digital Innovation

Blue Justice marked 2024 with significant milestones in digital platform development and regional cooperation, while maintaining its focus on supporting developing countries in addressing transnational organized fisheries crime.

With 61 countries now committed to the Copenhagen Declaration, representing jurisdictions responsible for fisheries crime prevention in more then 37% of the world’s exclusive economic zones, the initiative continued to strengthen international cooperation.

Five Years of Global Cooperation

The highlight of 2024 came on 18 June when Blue Justice celebrated its fifth anniversary at Oscarsborg Fortress in the Oslo Fjord. The event brought together 137 participants from 37 countries, with 57 representatives from 27 developing countries attending the commemoration. The celebration was livestreamed on regjeringen.no and later made available on bluejustice.org, reaching 68 viewers during the live broadcast and an additional 282 downloads by August 2024.

Former State Secretary Bjørg Sandkjær participated in the anniversary celebration alongside Henrik Fredborg Larsen, Director of UNDP’s Nordic Representation Office, and Gambian High Commissioner Fatou Bensouda, among other representatives from the international diplomatic corps in Norway. The Blue Justice Secretariat marked the occasion by releasing an anniversary report consolidating results from the initiative’s first five years.

Launch of Glistrup Transforms Maritime Surveillance

On 18 June 2024, Blue Justice launched Glistrup, a digital vessel tracking tool providing authorities from declaration countries access to maritime surveillance data from Norwegian satellites. The platform, inspired by the Norway’s own national  surveillance system “BarentsWatch”, enables countries to analyze and risk-assess vessel activity in their own zones, identify transshipment activities, identity fraud, and illegal fishing activities.

The launch of Glistrup led to a marked increase in registered and active users of the digital platform Blue Justice Community, with most new users coming from developing countries. By year-end, the platform had reached 300 registered users, with 190 users from authorities in 29 developing countries. During 2024, authorities from Côte d’Ivoire, Guyana, St. Lucia, Solomon Islands, and Gambia registered as first-time users.

To ensure the platform meets user needs, a co-creator group was established on 28 June 2024 with active Blue Justice Community users providing input for further development. The group held its second meeting on 3 December 2024, with 40 participants from Cape Verde, Ecuador, Belize, South Africa, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Mauritius, Jamaica, and Liberia, alongside regional organizations and Blue Justice partners.

Regional Cooperation Strengthens

The Blue Justice Caribbean Hub continued to coordinate activities across the Caribbean region throughout 2024. A workshop held in Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, on 22-24 April brought together 24 participants from nine countries and territories, including six developing countries. Agriculture Minister Saboto Caesar of St. Vincent and the Grenadines opened the workshop on 22 June.

The Caribbean Hub held its annual meeting digitally on 28 November 2024, with 20 participants including 16 from developing countries representing Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Suriname, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands. One member country expressed interest in establishing a national inter-agency cooperation mechanism similar to Jamaica’s model.

Crown Prince Haakon Magnus, UNDP Goodwill Ambassador, and State Secretary Bjørg Sandkjær visited Jamaica on 18-20 November 2024. The Crown Prince met with the Blue Justice Caribbean Hub Secretariat and representatives of the national inter-agency mechanism for preventing fisheries crime, raising awareness and political support for the Copenhagen Declaration and Jamaica’s role as a regional driver in its implementation.

Knowledge Development and Capacity Building

Blue Justice’s Expert Group on Digital Forensics, established following an initiative from the Maldives, remained highly prioritized in 2024. On 7 May, the expert group organized a webinar where the Norwegian Police University College presented findings on digital evidence training programs in fisheries cases.

On 19 June, expert group members from the Maldives, Mauritius, and Jamaica presented their work to other Blue Justice Community Gathering participants at Oscarsborg. Three presentations were filmed and made available on Blue Justice Community with subtitles in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Blue Justice Academy was launched in 2024 and will be supported by the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) from 2025. The Academy piloted Module 2 of Blue Action, a capacity-building program for inter-agency cooperation in fisheries crime prevention, during a workshop in Kingston, Jamaica, on 17-18 April 2024. The workshop, led by Jamaican fisheries authorities, included 20 participants from nine Caribbean countries representing 17 different organizations.

International Training and Surveillance Support

The Blue Justice International Tracking Centre in Vardø conducted a full-day training session on the Glistrup vessel tracking tool on 20 June 2024, covering map usage, tracking, geometries, and vessel monitoring. During autumn 2024, the Centre developed digital training modules for vessel tracking using Glistrup, which will be available to Blue Justice Community users in 2025.

Throughout 2024, the Blue Justice International Tracking Centre provided introductory training on Blue Justice Community and Glistrup to Somalia, Belize, Côte d’Ivoire, Suriname, South Africa, and Grenada.

A maritime surveillance program pilot project began in 2024 to assess the utility of various satellite data sources for detecting shadow fleets. The project involves Kystverket (BarentsWatch), KSAT, VAKE, Jamaica, Cape Verde, UNDP, and the Blue Justice International Tracking Centre. Following a kick-off meeting at the Tracking Centre in Vardø on 11-13 March 2024, two data collection operations were conducted during the year, with a third planned for the first quarter of 2025.

Research and Documentation Initiatives

Through the Blue Fairness project, the International Labour Organization developed a quantitative survey to gather knowledge about countries’ vulnerabilities related to exploitation of vulnerable workers and human trafficking in the fisheries industry. The survey was tested in Indonesia in collaboration with the Indonesian Board of Research and Innovation, conducting approximately 3,500 interviews with fishers at 18 ports. Preliminary results were presented at a workshop in Indonesia in December 2024.

The Blue Justice Caribbean Hub organized a webinar on 29 October 2024 about cooperation during natural disasters and fisheries crime. Nineteen participants from Caribbean Hub countries and other Blue Justice countries explored lessons learned after Hurricane Beryl and discussed strategies for preventing illegal activity during and after natural disasters.

Planning for the Blue Justice Conference in 2025 began in late 2024, organized in collaboration with the Blue Justice Caribbean Hub Secretariat, UNDP, and other project partners. A documentary about Blue Justice, emphasizing work in the Caribbean, is nearing completion and will be launched in 2025.

Growing Interest from New Partners

Several developing countries showed interest in more binding institutional cooperation during 2024, including Jamaica, Cape Verde, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Angola. Blue Justice established new data-sharing agreements, including cooperation with the US Department of Transportation’s Volpe Institute for sharing AIS data from ground stations in countries where they have established partnerships.