ON DIGNITY, VULNERABILITY, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND FISHERFOLKS: CHILEAN SUBSISTENCE FISHING ACCORDING TO INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract Subsistence fishing is a confusing and heterogeneous fishery construct. Even so, its connection to human protection compels us to analyze it through the lens of human rights. Using the case of Chile due to its legal peculiarities, we aim to determine the scope of the Chilean legislation on subsistence fishing, integrating international treaties on human rights, case law, and reports from United Nations agencies regarding three issues. First, we examine how the Chilean legislation relates to the right to food and the promotion of decent social conditions. Next, we explain why the prohibition of riggings and propulsion enables us to identify economically precarious users and how this prohibition is related to vulnerabilities and poverty as human rights concepts. Finally, we show how the property of indigenous peoples and the culture of fisherfolk populations could impose their inclusion and preferences in access to subsistence fishing resources. Considering the results, we hold that human rights help to clarify the understanding of it and propose partial amendments to the Chilean legislation on subsistence fishing. But, above all, they introduce protection standards that allow us to see such legislation not as a mere derivation of state privilege, but as an attempt to foster a situation of equality: an affirmative action. We conclude by presenting a conceptual approach for Chilean subsistence fishing, suggesting that it could help to unveil new objectives and rights in fishing, and even influence the understanding of natural resource allocation.