 Good morning Rear Admiral Chatfield, Professor Yumine, US Naval War College students, faculty and staff, esteemed colleagues and guests and members of the public. I'd like to begin by thanking Rear Admiral Chatfield for her unwavering leadership support of the Naval War Colleges Women, Peace and Security Program. And to Professor Yumine, thank you for inviting me to speak to this distinguished audience at one of the department's longest standing Women, Peace and Security events. I am Michelle Struck, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Partnerships in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. My office is overseen by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy Plans and Capabilities. And we are proud to be the primary DOD policy office for security cooperation, humanitarian assistance and disaster response, including COVID-19 global response. We are the policy office for policy matters associated with institutional capacity building and training that enhances civilian oversight of foreign security forces. And we establish responsible defense governance and implementation of the DOD-Lehi Law, which ensures that DOD security assistance does not flow to foreign security forces that commit gross violations of human rights. Importantly and relevant to all of you today, I also oversee the department's Women, Peace and Security Portfolio or WPS, our shorthand as I think you all know, as I'll refer to it today in my remarks. And I'm absolutely delighted to speak today about how the department thinks about women, peace and security and why women, peace and security principles are integral to our national security. I've had the opportunity to answer these questions a few times before and recognize it can be challenging to translate all of the very technical women, peace and security related mandates such as the security council mandates and women, peace and security related US law into defense policy, which guides DOD's military operations. But it is my delight to be able to do that today to translate this law and guidance we receive into defense policy that enables all of you to find the relevance of women, peace and security in your day-to-day portfolios and organizational missions in support of the secretary of defense. So today I'd like to start off by providing some of the inspiration behind this work and an overview of the requirements that are driving the DOD's approach to women, peace and security. I'll cover why the department has taken this on from a policy and an operational perspective, how this relates to the implementation of our national defense strategy or NDS and hopefully bring a greater understanding for each of you in terms of why this topic is so critical and essential to our national security. I'll also address the relationship of women, peace and security to other topics that the department works on, including sexual harassment and assault and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. And I'll conclude by putting forward a few recommended actions I know each of us can take to advance WPS in all of our day-to-day work. So one of the first things I'd love to start with is the first ever national strategy on gender equity and equality. There's a quote that I wanted to begin with from our president and vice president that I think resonates on this topic and I hope inspires you the way it inspires me. America is unique among the nations of the world because we were built on an idea that every one of us is equal in dignity and deserves to be treated equally. Though we have never fully lived up to that idea and not at the time of our founding nor in the century since, it is the defining hallmark of our country that we have never stopped reaching for it. To me, this is an extremely important place to start with the humility and dignity of our nation's effort to ever be greater and to ever strive for this type of equality. So I'll tell you now a little bit about what women peace and security is and what it's not before jumping in to how it advances our national security objectives. But I wanted to start with the recognition that we are not where we wanna be yet and we are consistently striving to do better. And all of you are a part of that important mission. So I'll start with this baseline understanding of women peace and security, which is very important because it keeps us grounded in our efforts to implement women peace and security in the context of the national defense strategy. And I hope that for many of you who've already worked on WPS, this part will be very familiar. Women peace and security is a global agenda stemming from a number of important landmark United Nations Security Council resolutions that started with our popular UN Security Council Resolution 1325 that acknowledged the different impact of conflict and crisis on women and girls. It advocates for their meaningful participation in peace and security decision-making and it calls on global actors to incorporate gender analyses into their interventions in conflict and crisis affected environments. UN Security Council Resolution 1325 establishes four core components or pillars of the global women peace and security agenda. First, very importantly, the increased participation of women in peace and security decision-making. So women not just being at the table but women having their ideas and decisions taken up. Second, the protection of women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence, including conflict-related sexual violence. Third, the prevention of violence against women. And fourth, increasing women and girls' access to relief and recovery assistance. Globally, United Nations member states have been working on these mandates since 2000. Quick math, around 23 years, so for quite some time and while there's been impressive progress, we in the United States government know that work remains and much of that work falls in the purview of defense institutions around the globe. Next, I'd like to highlight some of the US laws and policies underlying the department's women peace and security efforts as the largest defense institution in the world. I'll start with the legal underpinnings of the rationale for why the department has taken on women peace and security. This is an important issue for several US presidential administrations and it is an equally important issue for Congress. But there's also a strategic reason. The US government sees the strategic need to implement women peace and security across a multitude of sectors and has enacted a number of laws and policies to ensure that the US government comprehensively implements women peace and security. In short, we believe it's the right thing to do but it's also the effective thing to do to make us more capable and to make us more operationally relevant and able to meet the challenges, the many challenges of our moment. UN Security Council Resolution 1325 sets out a framework as I mentioned for women peace and security but successive presidents and members of Congress have also put forth important statements explaining why we have to be guided by these principles. So in 2011, President Barack Obama issued executive order 13595 which largely adopted the women peace and security framework from 1325 as the basis for the US government's women peace and security efforts. It also directed the release and implementation of something very exciting even if it might sound a little bit mundane which is the implementation of the US national action plan or NAP on women peace and security. This important effort is putting concrete actions behind our commitments and that's one of the reasons I'm so excited that as a country we took this on in 2011. This was also done in response to both the advocacy efforts of civil society groups and the strong bipartisan support provided by members of Congress. I wanna emphasize that participation by a wide sector of people in our society, institutions and really listening humbly to others is one of the things that underscores women peace and security. So I'm highlighting that civil society just so you can understand that even in our defense institutions it is a critical part of our work to listen to others and to be motivated and responsive to the things that they think we can do better. So in 2017, the women peace and security act was signed into law by President Donald Trump. It was the first comprehensive statute enacted by any government worldwide on women peace and security. It mandated the development of a single government wide strategy known as the US strategy on women peace and security which was issued in 2019. So you can see the bipartisan cross administration support for this important agenda. The strategy was notable in that it featured a concerted effort among relevant US departments and agencies including the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security and the US Agency for International Development or USAID to accelerate institutionalized and better coordinate efforts to achieve women peace and security objectives. By 2020, the US government had continued to have positive momentum on women peace and security implementation. That was a landmark year for us as we saw the publication of DOD's women peace and security strategic framework and implementation plan or SFIP, something that many of you practitioners of women peace and security may be very familiar with because it helps to guide our work today. This was a unifying step towards ensuring the meaningful participation of women across the development, management and employment of the joint force and integrating what's known as gender perspectives. And that means exposing and understanding the impacts of gender differences into military activities, operations and investments across the continuum of conflict. It's a way to increase our knowledge of the spaces that we operate in and to better understand the dynamics and subtleties of the differences that people have so that we can be more effective. In 2021, the department also received a dedicated women peace and security authority in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 21, requiring the department to hire dedicated women peace and security staff and anyone who has worked on anything knows how important it is to get real staff who are able and dedicated to any mission to make it happen. So that is something very exciting for us. They also required us to train US defense personnel to expand our efforts beyond a small subset of people and into the wider department and to advance women peace and security through our security cooperation activities with our partners and access barriers to recruiting, developing, retaining and promoting women in our foreign partners security forces as well. So you can see this exponential impact that's happening as a result of the marriage of our congressional authorities, the people we've been able to put in place and the mandates established legally and globally allowing us to be a country that is leaning forward on women peace and security and making important progress. This particular congressional authority has been instrumental to advancing women peace and security across the department's operations and activities. We've made great use of it and to facilitate our women peace and security efforts Congress has appropriated funds for DOD to advance women peace and security purposes dedicated funds since FY 2019. And that continues today. As a policymaker, these women peace and security specific authorities including appropriations send a strong signal to our department's leadership that the United States is sincere in its support for women peace and security. I also know personally the passion of our leaders on this topic of ensuring that we are living up to our country's ideals and we are being as effective as possible, both ourselves and ensuring our partners have that same toolkit. At the same time, these authorities reflect the department's important role as one of the co-leading US federal departments and agencies that are tasked with implementing the WPS Act. The Department of Defense is a co-lead. We're not subordinate to other departments. This is a commitment that we have and that's something we're very proud to implement. So I wanted to share with you that the incredible partnership we have between the legal mandates that we respect and implement and our strategic purpose in doing so, this is what makes our work on women peace and security so strong. Today I'd also like to talk with you about our implementation. Specifically how women peace and security relates to the National Defense Strategy implementation, which is our guiding force in how we are looking at the threats that we face in the future, how we can prepare as a country to meet those threats. So I talked a little bit about the legal requirements to establish the foundation for our work, but our department's robust operational implementation of women peace and security activities is something that's very important to advancing our strategic priorities that are set forth in the National Defense Strategy. Women peace and security is a national security tool that can help us to build our enduring advantages to advance our national defense strategy objectives. From a DOD perspective, women peace and security strengthens the department's collaboration and coordination with allies and partners. It builds resilience against competitors coercive actions and it enhances the design, development, readiness and management of our people. When we hear our department leadership emphasizing the importance of integrated deterrence, promoting resilience and innovation or underlining the role of allies and partners as the center of gravity for the NDS. I often think about how women peace and security is central and advantageous to those efforts. Women peace and security is important to both our strategic aims and to our ability to do crisis response. So I'll lay out a couple women peace and security actions the department has focused on to advance national defense strategy objectives that align to our mission resources and authorities. This is where I hope for you this is helpful because I want to clarify what women peace and security is and what it is not from a policy perspective. And my goal here is to help you understand my perspective on the department's role in advancing the meaningful participation of women in peace, security and conflict resolution. Because sometimes I've seen this happen for someone that's not steeped in it every day it may be difficult to understand how the department can support this laudable aim. Sometimes we think about our defense objectives and we do so in a way that does not consider the impact on women and girls that does not consider women's leadership. And this is something that in our efforts to ever become more effective, greater and closer to our ideals as a nation we can address through this agenda. But if you have questions in your head as you are listening to this please take note of those because we would love to be able to have a dialogue with you so we can answer some of these questions and work on this journey together even if we don't have all the answers. So a few things that of the actions I wanted to share. One, DOD can advance the meaningful participation of women and people of different gender identities across the development management and employment of the joint force. So as a defense institution in short we want to model the women, peace and security principles we work with others to uphold. We know that any defense institution including our own is only as strong and as capable as the workforce that it employs. Our people are essential. DOD's strategic advantage in overcoming the myriad global security threats facing the US is the diverse and dynamic talent pool in our nation from which it can draw. Given the evolving nature of future global challenges and how widespread they are, how transnational they are, DOD must also grow and evolve to bolster the integrated deterrence required to overcome these challenges. DOD needs diverse perspectives, experiences and skill sets to remain a global leader to deter war and to keep our nation secure. Leveraging the strategic diversity and expanding access to attract, retain and advance the best talent in our nation and talent that reflects our nation has to offer are the only ways that DOD will be able to outthink, outmaneuver and outfight any adversary or threat. As you all know, the department's diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts are managed by the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, not by OSD policy but our offices are closely coordinated. We recognize that these portfolios are mutually reinforcing. PNR's approach to talent management ensures that the undersecretary of defense for policies, women, peace and security efforts with allies and partners remain effective and remain credible. Second, DOD can ensure that US military operations do not have a negative impact on the condition of partner nation civilians based on their different gender roles, identities and responsibilities. We want to ensure that we are not doing harm in our work and by recognizing and including the women, peace and security agenda that takes us a step closer to meeting that challenge. Women, peace and security provides the department with a critical perspective on conflict and crisis response. And a little bit of context about me. I'm a humanitarian professional by training and by experience and having spent time working in humanitarian settings. This perspective to me is an important operational reason why the department's women, peace and security efforts are so important. A gender perspective allows us to look at conflict and crisis more holistically and use that information to tailor our operations and activities within a conflict affected space. We don't want to operate with tunnel vision. We don't want to ignore key parts of a population. We don't want to ignore key places where people are congregating. All of these things, by looking at a gender perspective we can understand power dynamics, places, we can understand the civilian environment better. All of these things are essential in a conflict so that we don't miss important pieces of information that would make our military more effective. We're seeing this play out right now in the war in Ukraine and in the aftermath of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria right now. In Ukraine, we witnessed the devastating impacts of President Putin's war of choice on the Ukrainian people. A UNICEF report in 2022 on the impacts of the war in Ukraine and the subsequent economic downturn on child poverty in Eastern Europe and Central Asia found that an additional 10 million people, including about 4 million children, will be poverty-afflicted compared to pre-war conditions. We know that Ukrainian women and girls are experiencing these impacts in different ways with different long-term effects than their male counterparts. Ukrainian women, as we've all seen, are actively defending their country. They're in leadership positions, they are risking their lives, and they are standing up. Their support ranges from actively serving in combat in uniform to providing enabling and sustainment support for forward Ukrainian forces to organizing local civilian volunteer groups. Women, peace, and security is also important in informing DOD's response to natural disasters. We know, for instance, that food insecurity, insufficient housing, and limited access to women's healthcare puts women, especially pregnant and elderly women, at a heightened risk in the aftermath of a catastrophe. We're seeing this now in the wake of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. And women, peace, and security principles remind us that conflict and crisis are not gender neutral. Therefore, our responses must be gender responsive by planning for the different security needs and access to resources for people based on their gender. We can better prevent conflict and help stabilize situation, including episodes of violence, natural disasters, and humanitarian crises. That is why women, peace, and security is so valuable as a tool for common security and defense policy, and is relevant to DOD planning, operations, and execution as we do play an important role at times when needed using our unique military capabilities in disaster and crisis response. Three, I'll share with you that DOD can take action to protect and mitigate harm to civilians by accounting for the different human security threats to partner nation civilians. Our secretary has taken on this issue as an important one to ensure that civilian harm mitigation response is improved in our department, and we are part of this effort in the women, peace, and security agenda. Human security threats to civilians can include violations of civilians' human rights, sexual exploitation and abuse of civilians, crisis and conflict related sexual violence, trafficking in persons, and the damaging of cultural property. Often these human security threats don't take place in all areas of conflict or all at the same time, but DOD has the ability to understand and assess the impact of human security issues on planned military operations, and if detected, identify mitigation strategies for those human security threats within our existing authorities. As you know, as is important in every setting that we are in right now, the National Defense Strategy as our center guide directs us to compete with the PRC as the pacing challenge. I see women, peace, and security underpinning our engagements with allies and partners that promote human rights, civilian control of the military, and other human security issues. These values are something that our secretary talks about a lot. For instance, just recently, he talked at a conference of the defense ministers of the Americas, and he said that our countries aren't just bound together by geography. We are also drawn closer by our common interests and our common values, by our deep respect for human rights and human dignity, our commitment to the rule of law, and our devotion to democracy, because the more we deepen our democracies, the more we deepen our security. So this is something that is a centerpiece of our work. It keeps us safer, and it helps us with our partnerships. A women, peace, and security approach on human security threats not only keeps us in alignment with other allied defense institutions, but it helps us to collaborate better with allies and partners to deter aggression from our adversaries and compete along the conflict continuum. And at a strategic level, women, peace, and security helps DOD as a defense institution model our values when engaging cooperatively with like-minded allies and partners. We want to be credible, we want to be legitimate, and we want to ensure that we are walking the talk when it comes to this important issue. As I mentioned before, the secretary's civilian harm mitigation and response action plan, which was the action that the secretary set out to ensure that we are prioritizing improvements in our civilian harm mitigation response architecture. So we call that inside our department, the CHIMRAP. It's a priority initiative that will help the department's transparency and accountability for how we mitigate and respond to civilian harm. I'll share with you that the deputy secretary of defense hosted an International Women's Day event at the Pentagon last month. And I was so excited to hear her confirm that incorporating gender-based considerations into DOD's activities and operations will help us better protect civilians. Women, peace, and security helps to shape the DOD's understanding of the civilian environment, of our planning and operations within that environment. We do this to ensure to the greatest degree possible that misunderstandings about gendered roles and responsibilities do not contribute to disproportionate harm to civilians. We want to ensure we don't have blind spots in areas that are preventable. As a department that thinks ahead so effectively, and I know that you are learning right now at the Naval War College how to do that, this is an area that there's so much research and study on that we can learn from to ensure that we are thinking ahead and we are most effectively using the tools available to us. So efforts to protect civilians and mitigate harm towards them, align with the DOD's remit while conducting operations or while working with allies and partners, it also supports the global women, peace, and security mandates, particularly when DOD has paid close attention to the gendered implications of military operations. And four, the final one I'll share with you is that DOD can work with allies and partners to advance women, peace, and security through our engagements, capability and capacity building activities. Women, peace, and security often is perceived as a lower risk opportunity for managing relationships. It's not escalatory. It's an important area of cooperation and partnership. In my role overseeing the office with primary responsibility for security cooperation policy for the department, I think a lot about how we can better integrate concepts like WPS, human rights, and civilian harm mitigation into our relationships with our allies and partners in order to help better implement the national defense strategy through security cooperation. I wanna say too that there's such a long history in work on gender, gender and development, gender in other areas that a perception that at times women, peace, and security or gender equality is something that some nations are trying to force on other nations. I wanna share that the way we work on women, peace, and security does not do that. When we work with our allies and partners, it doesn't mean that we are forcing them in any way to adopt a US specific or a US-centric approach to women, peace, and security. We listen to our partners and we meet them where they are. It means, however, that we are honest and transparent about the lessons that the United States Department of Defense has learned and that we ensure that we understand the context of our partner nations, their history, their culture, their national security objectives prior to partnering together on women, peace, and security through a defense relationship. It's a mutually reinforcing area for us and it's something that we understand we are doing in places where there is a demand to do it and a recognition of our own imperfection at times and the road that we have traveled on this topic as we continue to strive to ever be better. So I want you to understand that the allies and partners we work with are those who desire a closer security relationship with the United States and who recognize the connection between women, peace, and security and their own national security. We do this at different stages in their development and partnership and of course, recognizing the different stages that we are in. We often do very little convincing with a partner when engaging on women, peace, and security because they understand its advantage in advancing their own names. So based on what I've seen and learned during my few years now at DOD, I've identified three primary things that DOD can do to advance women, peace, and security and working together with allies and partners. First, we can expand opportunities and remove barriers that contribute to the under-representation of women and foreign security forces. Just like here at home, there's a lot more to do on this topic and that's one of the reasons our partnership which recognizes the road that we still have to go to better include women in decision making is something that our partners can learn from as well and we can learn from them. Second, addressing sexual harassment, sexual assault, domestic abuse, or other forms of violence that disproportionately affect women's participation in foreign security forces. And third, integrating gender analysis into security sector policy, planning, operations, exercises, and training for foreign security forces. Interestingly, the first and second actions the Department of Defense has taken to advance women and under-represented groups in our own security forces. The first is an action we've taken and the third is a core component of how DOD operationalizes women, peace, and security across the department which I'll speak to a little more in a moment. And all these things are based on actions we've already taken which is very exciting to me. We've taken these and we've applied them to our own defense institutions and that is the inspiration that is guiding us to be able to help our allies and partners just as we do with other capacity building activities that we undertake. We use military to military engagements and security cooperation activities to share with our partners what's worked for us and what hasn't and to adapt our approach to women, peace, and security to better meet the context in which our partners are operating. I'll give you an example. One example of how we're expanding opportunities and removing barriers to women's participation in foreign security forces is the aptly called women, peace, and security barriers assessment pilot program. I'm very excited about this because this project will develop a barriers assessment methodology that DOD can use to further identify challenges to women's recruitment, retention, and employment and partner nation security forces. Our goal is to use that information to inform future DOD engagements and other security cooperation programs with partners. I hope as well that this assessment will help standardize the types of information that we're looking for and how we approach working with partners to help them remove barriers to women's participation in their own security forces. Regarding addressing sexual harassment and assault in foreign security forces, I see this as part of our institutional capacity building work with foreign partner nations. We know that sexual harassment and assault within institutions is a key horrific barrier that inhibits women's participation in those institutions. We've learned this from our own experience integrating women into the US armed forces and that is a lesson we can share with partner nations as they pursue the integration of women within their own security forces. On another topic of integrating gender analysis into security sector policy planning, operations, exercises, and training for foreign security forces, an increasing request we've received from partner nations over the past two to three years is for the US to help partners develop their own gender advisory workforces. And gender advisory workforce, I know it's a technical term, but our ability to establish a cadre of women and men, people of all different genders who are able to perform the skill of doing a gender analysis is something that has greatly expanded our ability to integrate this into defense planning and operations. I wanted to share with you also that a gender analysis is something that anybody can do. It's a capability that you can learn, it's a skill. You don't wake up in the morning as a woman knowing how to do a gender analysis, just like you don't wake up in the morning as a man knowing how to do anything related to men. It's something that can be learned and is really important to us to establish a gender advisory workforce as we have in our department already that recognizes the important role that every person can play as a gender advisor. When they do this gender analysis, it forces us to ask the question, to what extent does this particular military activity affect people of different genders differently? It gives us a framework for organizing this information to inform the design of military actions. For the military, a gender analysis is applicable during operational planning, steady-state operations and crisis planning. And using a gender perspective when planning military activities means understanding that military actions can have different effects on civilian populations based on gender. It also emphasizes that the impacts of gender are not static. A gender analysis is an iterative process that requires updating as the environment and circumstances change. It's informed by the intersectionality, which means the differing issues that affect parts of the civilian population from their socioeconomic status, to their race and to their ethnic group, to their really kind of where they are in the power schema of the environment that they're in. And a gender analysis is necessary to fully understand the operational environment, to provide key atmospherics and to inform military action. And this includes mitigating unintentional harm to civilians. Having that analysis is a way to use your own imagination in order to use data, research, discussions with people, and an understanding of the environment around you to better increase the effectiveness of military operations. Again, it's something everyone can learn and I assure each of you if and if you're feeling a bit tentative, it's a skill that you can do too. So much like any other capability the US wants to build in partner nations, to be able to reduce military risk, we've conducted some women, peace and security, security cooperation activities that have helped to build up partner nations gender advisory workforces. For example, just last month, US Indopecom completed the first gender focal point course with Papua New Guinea's Defense Force. The training focuses on how to incorporate gender perspectives and women, peace and security principles into the Papua New Guinea defense organization and within its military operations. Ultimately, investing in partner countries this ways allows the US to deepen interoperability in crucial strategic regions like US Indopecom areas, they're in the area of responsibility. So I'll start to begin the rounding out and concluding my remarks as you've been very patient with me and generous with your time today. I want to take a moment to highlight some of the important work being done by the Department of the Navy to advance and implement women, peace and security concepts and priorities. First and foremost is the Naval War College's admirable effort to not only organize and chair this year's women, peace and symposium but to do so in a bigger way than ever before. I believe that last year's women, peace and security symposium had approximately 270 participants and I heard it had representatives from 21 nations. This year, the symposium is larger, has a bigger attendance and offers many more valuable opportunities for enhanced understanding and professional development pertaining to the WPS policy framework. This is an incredible opportunity for each of you to be candid, honest, to ask curious questions and to really dig into a topic that you may be on a really different spectrum on. You may be a practitioner already or an advocate. You may be someone that really says, I don't quite understand why we're doing this and I do hope my remarks today have helped to clarify some of that and to motivate you to be a champion of women, peace and security from no matter where you sit. And the Naval War College is an incredible leader in our department in making sure that you have the opportunity to do this. They are a great asset to the DOD, providing expertise, education and engagement on national security challenges in a way that the DOD has not previously done. And I personally hope that many other parts of our department take your example and take up this mandate as well. And this symposium is further evidence of this. So Professor Yaminen colleagues, thank you so much for your efforts. We sincerely appreciate it. And I hope that everyone tuning in online today and in the room is feeling inspired about the fact that this is a central part of what can make us more effective and is part of your own task to be able to implement. I was also very excited to see women, peace and security integrated as part of the U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command, U.S. Fourth Fleet's continuing promise 2022 mission to Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The US MS Comfort Hospital ship conducted mission stops in Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. I had the privilege of meeting the crew myself and touring the ship and an included personnel from more than a dozen NGOs and military members from Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, the Netherlands and the UK. That was quite a grouping of people committed to doing such important work on behalf of our department. Beyond increasing regional stability and interoperability, the 2022 continuing promise mission saw more than 13,000 patients participated in more than 25 subject matter expert exchanges, conducted five humanitarian assistance and disaster relief workshops, or took in 11 community relations engagements and conducted, I'm very excited to say this number, 18 women, peace and security events. So they clearly, it was not a side effort, it was an important part of their mission. Likewise, this past September, the US NS Mercy, the sister ship to the US NS Comfort concluded Pacific partnership 2022, which had similar goals to those of continuing promise 2022. Another exciting thing for me, especially as a policy representative is that the DOD is developing a standardized policy that codifies women, peace and security practices that advance the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Act and further support our national security objectives. Our end goal, which again, we want you all to be part of is that we are integrating women, peace and security as a supporting theme throughout all major department activities that interact with civilian populations in addition to all department security cooperation activities that build our partner's institutional capacity. I hope today that the fact that women, peace and security is integral to our national security, that we have strong reasons for our continued popular support of its advancement across administrations on the hill in our halls should be clear from my remarks today. From the way that we analyze and examine threats to our ability to remain competitive against them, women, peace and security provides DOD with both an analytical approach and a strategic opportunity for accomplishing our mission to deter conflict. And if necessary, defend our national security interests. The role and power of the US Navy is a critical part of this toolkit. In saying this, I do recognize that for some of you who might not know where to start with women, peace and security. And I know I pointed to quite a lot of documents and pointing to documents is not always the best way to learn. And you may not fully understand its potential to make significant contributions in conflict resolution, security governance and military affairs. But I will say that the world notices our actions. We're on the global stage as the United States and our national defense strategy states that we will lead with our values. That doesn't make it easy. It's not an easy thing to do. We are not there yet in terms of our ambitious goals, but each of you can be part of ensuring that we are striving to get there. We have a firm commitment to a rules-based international order, one that is critical to maintaining our competitive advantage in this world and working together to meet challenges that we simply cannot face alone. Our president has called this the decisive decade. The actions that we take today, the role of our allies and partners are more essential than ever before. And we can simply cannot leave women out of our defense institutions. And we have to be there to support our partners when they are building more of their people, more of their knowledge and more of their operational effectiveness by advancing women peace and security. We have a firm commitment to promoting the transparent and accountable oversight of security forces. We've seen security forces that are not accountable. We've seen on the world stage when they commit abuses and the fact that that hurts them operationally. It hurts their legitimacy and it hurts people. And we've seen that respecting human rights is an essential way, again, to ensure that we are living up to our values and so are allies and partners, that we are creating the world and we are part of shaping a world that we know will be safer, fairer, more accountable to all. So the promotion of these values and the principles that WPS advances directly balance against the autocratic powers that seek to undermine this system. So I invite you one last time to be curious. As you listen to the speakers of the symposium and attend sessions today and tomorrow, I encourage you to think critically about the role of women peace and security and the potential. If you have a blind spot on this, how do you propose that you'll feel it? I suggest that you ask these questions that you come up with at least one action today at the symposium that you personally can do to better inform yourself. And I ask that you interact again and again. You ask the hard questions and you remember that we may not be at the place we want to be as a nation on this topic, but that doesn't give us any excuse to stop striving every day to be ever more perfect as a nation and to ensure that we are fighting for this value because in doing so, we are fighting for our country and the values that we represent. I look forward to everything that you will all do to make our country greater. I'm so happy to be in partnership with you and it's been my privilege to speak with you today. Thank you so much.