 My name is Sarah Gulabdara, CEO of Legacies of War, as well as the chair of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmine and Customization Coalition. My name is Dr. Lekin Anu. I'm a professor of sociology at California State University of Long Beach. I'm here today at USIP for the second annual War Legacies Symposium on Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. So the Legacies of War, and this is in respect to the American Secret War in Laos, where from 1964 to 1973, the United States dropped over 2.5 million tons of ordnance during 580,000 bombing mission over Laos. I was born after the war, and my first memory of a bomb happened when my father had to operate on a classmate of mine right in front of our house. My dad was a surgeon during that time. The little girl was just walking home from school, just as I was. So this haunting memory have left like an impact on my life, and which has led me to my role today. For me personally, the fact that not having the opportunity to get to know my extended family members in Cambodia, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles and cousins, one cannot underestimate the lost opportunity for experiential memory making and the lack of opportunity to interact with them. And that interaction and memory making opportunities is a way to transmit cultural history and experiences that are important to the Cambodian identity. While I can't speak for the rest of Americans in the US, I can say that Cambodian Americans in particular, for me as a medical sociologist, I try to find solutions to the unresolved trauma that affects my community, both in the United States and in Cambodia. And so when I heard about the International War Crimes Tribunal, the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia, I heard that there was an opportunity to have Cambodian survivors participate in the search for justice in K-002, the prosecution of the former senior Khmer Rouge defendants. And so I contacted the court officials and they basically said, yes, you can participate by way of submitting victim information form. So I figured out the mechanics of international law and the victim's participation. Long story short, I was able to submit the largest collection of testimonies with the community, Cambodian community across the United States. So this is our contribution to peace and reconciliation in Cambodia. In 2016, when President Barack Obama visited Laos, he was the first sitting U.S. president to actually go to Laos and acknowledge America's history there during the American secret war. He not only acknowledged, but he was out there with the people and he made a landmark announcement of $90 million for the next three years, so $30 million each year to address the impacts of unexplored ordinance victims' assistance and mind-race education. So since then, legacies of war have worked with our leaders in Congress, including Senator Patrick Leahy and Tim Reiser from his team to ensure that funding grows each year to address this issue. Number one first and foremost is working and deepening our commitment to ensure that funding level for UXO clearance, victim assistance, mind-race education grows. I think this is a great opportunity for U.S. investment to invest in health infrastructure, training for nurses and other medical professionals, and of course, the transportation available to achieve this in order to save more lives. In today's symposium, we talked about 7,000, you know, exchanges between Vietnamese and U.S. You know, I think this is an opportunity to do the same with the youth in Laos. The opportunities, I believe that we've already tried the political and economic approach. I believe it's important to promote the U.S.-Kimboan relations by way of sociological approach and endeavors to tap into unconventional ways to address how to help people tap into the creative aspects, arts, culture, language, and that the opportunities could be in the form of education, especially for the younger generation. Majority don't know what had happened, why it happened, and how to understand how this tragic history is a part of their identity, part of their history, but yet it should not define them. So how do we transform that something is negative and the legacies of war and conflict and devastation could be used as a way to promote healing and justice so that we can find accountability and justice for those that have been victimized by this?