Why GBV belongs in a fisheries conversation
Women hold up the global fisheries sector — and the Tanzanian coast is no exception. From harvesting near-shore species to processing, smoking, drying and marketing the catch in Dar es Salaam's Feri and Banda Beach markets and along Mtwara's Mikindani waterfront, women keep the value chain moving. But the same chain that depends on their labour exposes them to harassment, transactional sex pressure ("fish-for-sex"), domestic conflict over income, and economic violence that quietly erodes their earnings.
Heshimu Bahari's 2024 gender assessment surfaced this in numbers and in stories. Eight in ten women processors interviewed across Dar and Mtwara reported at least one form of GBV in the previous twelve months. Most had never discussed it formally. Most did not know that any of it was illegal, let alone reportable.
A fisheries project that ignores this is, in practice, building its work on top of unaddressed harm. So Heshimu Bahari put GBV directly into the centre of its training cycle — not as an add-on session, but as a foundation block.
What we walked through
The training, delivered to mixed cohorts of BMU members, market leaders, ward officials and women processors in both Dar and Mtwara, opened by naming the four forms of GBV that show up most often in coastal economies: physical, sexual, emotional/psychological, and economic. Economic GBV — withheld earnings, forced labour on boats, denial of access to processing facilities — was the most under-recognised and provoked the longest discussions.
Participants then worked through the legal framework: the Sexual Offences Special Provisions Act, the Law of Marriage Act provisions on economic abuse, and the workplace harassment protections that, in principle, extend to BMU and CFMA settings. A practical mapping exercise placed each form of GBV against the law that addresses it.
Finally, three referral pathways were walked through end-to-end: the police gender and children's desks in Temeke (Dar) and Mtwara Urban, the district one-stop centres for survivors, and the legal aid clinics that take pro-bono economic-violence cases. Phone numbers, locations and operating hours were written into every participant's notebook.
Where this goes next
GBV awareness is now a permanent module inside every Heshimu Bahari leadership, co-management and ecological monitoring training. Each cohort closes with a written commitment from the BMU or market association on a visible action — a posted referral list, a designated focal person, or a code of conduct for committee meetings.
In Dar, three BMUs have already appointed women focal points reporting directly to the chair. In Mtwara, the women processors' group at Mikindani has begun a peer-to-peer disclosure circle that meets weekly and connects survivors to the one-stop centre when they choose to escalate.
The next milestone is institutional: working with district fisheries offices in both regions to add a GBV clause to the standard BMU bylaws. When the rules of the fishery name harassment as a violation, enforcement finally has somewhere to live.
If we want women fully active in the fishery, GBV stops being a side topic and becomes a core competency.