Over 25 years ago, illegal fishing was seen as a significant threat to international fisheries. Extraordinary efforts, such as the adoption of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement and the UN Compliance Agreement, illustrated the importance of addressing illegal fishing at the global level. The countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have a long history of addressing fisheries interests by leading global efforts. The Santiago Declaration of 1952 established a 200 nautical mile fisheries zone leading to the codification of the concept in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It also created a regional coordination mechanism, the Permanent Commission of the South Pacific (CPPS), which has recently begun efforts to establish a regional plan of action to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in accordance with the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) International Plan of Action on IUU. The intervening decades have seen i
WASHINGTON James G. McGann, Ph.D., longtime director of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, died Nov. 29. McGann worked closely with The Heritage Foundation throughout his tenure at Penn and supported the entire think tank community with his annual “Global Go To Think Tank Index” and international conferences.
February 5, 2021
The United States Institute of Peace (USIP), a think tank funded by the federal government, focuses on conflict resolution in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and other global hotspots. (Photo by Larry Luxner)
From Australia’s Asialink and Brussels-based Friends of Europe to the Zimbabwe Economic Policy Analysis and Research Unit, think tanks today flourish on every continent except Antarctica. They focus on a wide range of issues including healthcare, defense, fiscal policy and international relations.
Yet it seems that Washington, D.C., is home to more think tanks and better ones than any other city on Earth. In fact, six of the world’s 20 best such organizations are headquartered in the nation’s capital, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Strategies Program (TTCSP).