The Voluntary Guidelines for Ensuring Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (Small-scale Fisheries Guidelines) are the first internationally adopted instrument devoted entirely to small-scale fisheries, a sector that has hitherto been very often overlooked, despite its fundamental importance.

The small-scale fishing sector tends to be deeply rooted in local communities, traditions, and values. Many small-scale fishermen are self-employed and generally supply their families and communities with fish, which are consumed directly. Women play an important role in the sector, especially in post-capture and processing activities. It is estimated that around 90 percent of the total number of people who depend directly on capture fishing work in small-scale fishing. This sector is thus a real economic and social engine, which ensures food and nutritional security, which creates jobs and has multiplier effects on local economies, and which is the basis of the livelihoods of communities living at the water's edge.

The Artisanal Fisheries Guidelines are long overdue. Indeed, there was a need for an international instrument presenting consensual principles and guidelines on small-scale fisheries. The Guidelines complement the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries which, alongside the fisheries provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is the most widely recognized and widely applied international fisheries instrument. They are also closely linked to the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, the Voluntary Guidelines in Support of the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security and the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems. Like these instruments, the Artisanal Fisheries Guidelines accord a high priority to the realization of human rights and to the need to address vulnerable and marginalized groups.