Fishermen, pirates, and the politics of aid: An analysis of the Somali Fishermen Registration Programme

- United Nations programme seeks to identify and institutionalize maritime identities.
- Local politics and power struggles influenced who could register as fishermen.
- Somali maritime populations are legitimized or “othered” through data registration.
- The fishermen identity is linked to future development programming and aid.
- Notion that unknown maritime Somalis are potential criminals remains unchallenged.

Once labeled the largest single threat to international shipping in recent years, piracy off the coast of Somalia is at an all-time low. Although the immediate threat of piracy attacks appears to be quelled, the issue of Somali piracy still haunts the coast of Somalia through the criminalization of maritime populations. This paper analyzes the joint effort of Somali regional governments and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to register and decriminalize Somali fishermen off the coast of Somalia. As part of the Somali fishermen registration programme, over 5000 fishermen have registered their biometric data with the Puntland, Galmudug, and Somaliland governments. I examine the practices of data entry and the distribution of fishermen identification cards through interviews with government officials, FAO field officers, representatives of fishing communities, and participant observations made at a data validation workshop held in Bossaso, Somalia. Located in the context of long-term research on United Nations programming to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia, the case study illustrates how various actors utilized the Somali fishermen registration programme to marginalize particular populations and reshape future geographies of aid.