Humane Society International praised the May31st vote by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to reconfirm its supreme authority over whale conservation, heading off a strategy by Japan to downgrade great whales at the upcoming meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in The Hague.
By a decisive majority, the IWC passed a resolution reaffirming the continuing importance and validity of the IWC's commercial whaling moratorium and the IWC's role in protecting whales. The resolution passed by a vote of 37-4-4, with Japan and its pro-whaling allies not participating as a bloc for the second time at this year's IWC. Yesterday evening, the Japan bloc used the same tactic in an attempt to weaken the strength of an affirmative vote deploring its continued reliance on lethal methods of scientific research in the Antarctic.
Significantly, today's IWC resolution warned that any weakening of existing restrictions in trade under CITES could have significant adverse effects on the moratorium and increase threats to whales worldwide. Its passage substantially diminishes the political value of last year's St. Kitts Declaration, in which Japan and its allies, using their simple majority at IWC 58, passed a resolution saying that the commercial whaling moratorium was no longer necessary.
"The resolution approved in Anchorage today," said Kitty Block, HSI director of international treaties "sends a clear message to the 170 members of CITES that attempts by Japan and other pro-whaling nations to circumvent IWC competency must be rejected."
The resolution Japan is preparing to introduce at CITES calls into question the status of all the great whales covered by the IWC, so their level of protection can be downgraded and their meat and other parts traded internationally.
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