 Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Stockton Center for International Law and the United States Naval War College here in beautiful and slowly but surely warming Newport Road and Irland. I'm Lieutenant Colonel John Chair and the Deputy Chair here at the Stockton Center and thank you for joining us for this installment of our Stockton series. This is certainly an active time here at the Stockton Center. We're currently presenting the conference on Oceans Law and Policy along with our co-sponsors, the Japanese Institute of International Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Nippon Foundation and the World Maritime University of the International Maritime Organization. That event began today and continues tomorrow and Wednesday. We have over 1,000 registrants thus far and we encourage you to join us for the next two days of the conference. We'll post a link for the event in the chat for more information. In the next week, the Stockton Center will hold our third annual Alexander C. Cushing conference from 17 to 19 May. This event will be virtual and we'll post a link in the chat with more information about the conference and how you can log in to join us next week. Today, our great lineup of panelists will address gender perspectives and military operations and of course that'll be moderated by Stockton Center Military Professor, Professor Heather Triegel. This is the seventh in our Stockton series and to learn more about the series and to sign up for email updates on future events, we encourage you to visit the Stockton Center website which we'll also post in the chat and please also follow us on Twitter at Stockton Center. And now it's my honor and pleasure to introduce Professor James Kraska. Professor Kraska is the Charles H Stockton Professor of International Maritime Law at the Stockton Center at the Naval War College. Professor Kraska. Thank you Colonel Cherry and thank you everybody for joining us. International law has been part of the Naval War College since our founding with general order number one in the late 19th century that said that the war college would focus on two areas of curriculum. The first is strategy and the second is international law because international law is reflects the rules of the game for what we're engaged in, peace and security. We are furthering this legacy through publication of international law studies, the oldest journal of international law in the United States and rated in the top 10 journals globally in international law and also in the top two in national security law. We also promote this international law line of effort for the war college through a number of conferences and Colonel Cherry just mentioned that we are involved now with the conference with the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Nippon Foundation and World Maritime University Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and you can register go to our website if you're interested in that and then finally we continue through monthly seminar series such as this that major Heather Tradel put together for us on gender perspectives in armed conflict and this is another of our initiatives that reflects her line of effort and research in this area. We're joined today by the president of the Naval War College Ruer Admiral Trishanna Chatfield and we're very pleased to have you ma'am Admiral Chatfield is a warrior scholar in the truest sense. She is a naval aviator who is a graduate of Boston University where she studied international relations. She also earned a degree at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government a master's degree and she's the first president of the Naval War College to have earned a research doctorate where she earned that at University of San Diego. She has of course had a number of operational assignments and leadership positions in the U.S. Navy including as commanding officer she was commander as well of Joint Region Marianas. She served in Afghanistan. She was with numerous deployments for helicopter combat squadrons and also served on the Joint Staff including one of my prior positions there in the Joint Staff J5 strategy and policy as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense. She is a progressive thought leader for the Naval War College a forward thinking warrior scholar and we are now focusing on what areas we can further develop in women, peace and security and also in international law in this regard. Admiral Chatfield over to you and thank you for joining us today ma'am and so sorry sorry thank you so much for that very generous introduction. I do want to give one credit to a former president of the Naval War College very important gentleman here by the last name of Kurth because we did have one PhD holder here prior to my my practitioner's degree of education and he actually helped through his testimony to Congress to initiate the Naval War College offering the master's degree and so we actually had to go back to Congress and through testimony and through requests gained the authorities to offer that degree which they did approve and which we have been offering here since the early 90s so a wonderful wonderful institution we educate future leaders which everyone knows and we also have many outreach activities including wargaming and some fleet facing short courses for planners and for maritime operations professionals who come here for small bursts of time before going off to do real work in the real world for fleet and combatant commanders. So a very very interesting time here I want to welcome you all to this wonderful series of conversations so to all the panelists to the faculty to all other attendees thank you for logging on today we hope to be able to welcome you to Newport in the near future and we are in a progress of returning students to the campus and hosting hybrid and face-to-face events like our wargaming events which have resumed here in Newport. I also want to thank Major Trigl and the entire Stockton Center of International Law for inviting me to the discussion today. I became very interested in gender studies during my time at NATO. NATO has adopted and robustly implements the role of the gender advisor and I met this wonderful woman named Charlotte Isaacson who I see some the head nodding so good so Charlotte worked at shape and she's just a lovely woman very very robust knowledge in the gender role at shape for general breed love when I worked there and she had I'll just tell you one success that she did there's a small production called seven and it's some testimony of women who have really done remarkable work in women, peace and security and so she brought that play to shape and she conceived of having the male officers play the role of the remarkable women that were portrayed in this fantastic play and so we had our one two and three stars actually give the testimonies and read the roles of of the women in that really remarkable work called seven and so I would just say that through NATO I became aware of what specific NATO countries and partner countries were doing and it became aware of our own U.S. action plan that we had and now we've even progressed to having a implementation framework and now we have some guidelines already delineated for us here in the Department of Defense so 20 years has brought us quite a bit of progress from just thinking oh well I guess if we assign women to roles in our U.S. service well we're making progress but now meaningful progress is something that is even more profound and understanding the role of gender and gender perspective in the military is so important and I think without that tour at NATO I might not have been exposed in the same way in my own service so welcome to this gender perspectives and military operations emerging legal and operations issues panel this morning you will explore emerging issues related to integrating gender perspectives into all aspects of military operations to include those impacting the law of armed conflict happy to say that this panel is the first and certainly won't be the last Stockton series panel to address women peace and security and the first time Stockton Center for international law has addressed gender perspectives and the law of armed conflict so we'll meet this morning three international legal experts who are actively engaged in integrating gender perspectives in military operations they will discuss different ways in which the gender perspective can be employed in military operations and discuss how a gender analysis can be incorporated into different areas of the law the naval war college has had a long association with women peace and security by dating back to our first symposium in 2012 and we've had a large impact to the growth of the women peace and security strategy that recognizes the roles the diverse roles that women play as agents of change in preventing and resolving conflict countering terrorism and violent extremism and building post-conflict peace and stability and we are very excited because we're right in the process of hiring a new women peace and security chair here at the naval war college so we deliver excellence in education research and outreach here so that's the large mission functions and tasks of the naval war college and you know in today's dynamic security environment we need to be paying attention to more things than just numerical superiority or those old concepts of how we do a net assessment versus an adversary we need to also outthink adversaries panels like gender perspective and military operations help to contribute to synchronizing capabilities capacities roles investments and the authorities that we have and we need to do this while building a strong network of maritime partnerships that we can rely on and we can work with for interoperability and understanding so my charge to all of you this morning is to bring what you have and to listen with an open mind and think outside of your own areas of specialization listen and think critically about these important topics and provide feedback to one another to promote a relentless drive to anticipate think creatively and lead through change thank you all again for logging on today to this conference and I wish you a very productive and successful discussion thank you Admiral Chatfield good morning i'm major heather tragel and i'm honored to have the opportunity to have created and and to moderate this excellent panel for so long we have thought about arm conflict in a gender neutral manner but we have come to realize that arm conflict does not always have a gender neutral impact today we will discuss integrating a gender perspective into military operations and the law of arm conflict we are incredibly lucky to have three experts who are currently engaged in integrating a gender perspective into their work in international humanitarian law and military operations our first panelist is Cecilia Tengroth who has worked with the Swedish Red Cross since 2012 and is currently chief of staff and director of the office of the secretary general before joining the Swedish Red Cross she worked at the ministry of defense as secretary on two governmental inquiries on the use of force in peace operations and on Sweden's implementation of ihl previously she worked at the Swedish defense university and was responsible for training on ihl in human rights and military programs she was for many years an appointed member to the Swedish governmental ihl committee our next panelist will be Michelle Jarvis who has worked in the international criminal justice field for 20 years and is presently the deputy head of the international impartial and independent mechanism in Syria prior to that she was the deputy to the prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the mechanism for international criminal tribunals she brings extensive expertise on issues concerning gender and arm conflict having co-authored two books and numerous articles on the subject she initiated and was the inaugural coordinator of the prosecuting conflict related sexual violence network set up within the international association of prosecutors and is presently a member of the network's advisory council and last but certainly not least is our third panelist Ms. Paula Iwanaska an international lawyer with experience in human rights and humanitarian law and who has previously worked in government diplomacy and humanitarian relief her prior assignments have been in the EU and UN context as well as in the Middle East she currently serves as a legal expert for the Nordic center for gender and military operations the Nordic center in gender and military operations is an expert center and education training facility working on the implementation of the women peace and security agenda and integrating a gender perspective into military operations it is the NATO department head for gender and military operations discipline and the only international organization focused on gender as a capability in military context we will hear from each panelist and then we'll have a discussion with Q&A from the audience if you have a question please type your question in the Q&A window available at any time so that we may address it during the Q&A portion you can also upvote other questions if if somebody asks a similar question that you would like to also see answered I will now turn the virtual floor over to Ms. Tengroth for a discussion on what a gender perspective can entail in relation to weapons hi thank you so much and really interesting to hear the presentations that Admiral Chatfield gave them really thought were provoking I'm from Sweden and I think it's interesting to note that a lot of those initiatives you mentioned earlier have touched based on Sweden and it's no surprise that the Nordic Center for Gender and Military Operation has its seat right outside Stockholm and I would also like to give a cheers to you guys because already in 2007 I think a previous colleague to you Mike Schmidt attended a conference we held in Sweden called if I remember correctly Gender Perspectives on IHL it really was one of the first international conferences where we tried to take in just an open honest looked is there anything into this issue can we find something or is it just theoretical we'll have a practical application and really also underscoring that we didn't want to talk about only like women issues but really truly address gendered perspectives in relation to IHL because as as you mentioned Heather or Mrs. Trego sorry we there's so much work that that needs to be done on this and IHL on its basics when we just open the books it's fairly gender neutral that's true I mean those specific provisions in IHL that have a gendered issue relates to how women giving their reproductive features need special food or special protection but that's about it so on the basis of this I was asked to to talk about specifically IHL in relation to weapon review so that's what I'm going to touch upon but to get this started I'm just going to make two assumptions which really underscores what I will be talking on and I think what the panel will come back to is that armed conflict and the use of weapons impact men and women boys and girls in different ways they may be subject to different violence or they may be subject to the same types of violence but experience and cope with that differently so that's my first assumption my section assumption is if we want IHL to be effective and be applied in a non-discriminatory manner it needs to address this it needs to recognize that men and women boys and girls have different needs status and capabilities so when we plan and use military operations and also afterwards we need to to see what the effects were on these different bases so those were my two initial assumptions so I'm not going to talk about the application of IHL in general in military operation but really zoom in on article 36 to the additional protocol one which states that all states in the study development acquisition or adoption of new weapons etc they must understand how that relates to their obligations under IHL most states including Sweden have a system of how we do that and Sweden we have a specific ordinance and a specific governmental entity that that does this type of review so now the question is what would be the use and how could a gender perspective look like in relation to the legal review of weapons so it's a fairly specific issue but it it touches spaces on what I think the whole panel will talk about so when I look at this issue just why should we do this is there anything to be found I think there are three or four main reasons the first one is if we want to have good and strong compliance with IHL in general this is a perspective that just needs to be done you mentioned earlier that IHL truly is is general neutral but when those rules are applied in an inherently discriminatory setting obviously the effect of them won't be general neutral so that's something we just if we care about IHL if we want to have that minimum standard of humanity and protection we need to take this perspective into to gaze a second perspective is perhaps more technical but the effect of weapon today is gendered both in relation to sex and gendered specifics I'm just going to give you some two examples we know based on medical records that the surviving women and men of Hiroshima and Nagasaki women suffered twice as high risk of developing solid cancer than men that's just a fact due to the radiation they were exposed to something else I find really interesting is how traumatic brain injuries it's something that happens in war and also in general in accidents in the United States between 97 and 2007 53,000 people suffered this it's interesting to know that per 100,000 people 28 percent of men suffered traumatic brain injury but only 9 percent of females did so that's interesting why I mean obviously that can have gendered aspects as well maybe men are more prone to exposing or taking bigger risks or maybe military gear protection is more suited better fit of helmets for men than women it can be very many different reasons but there's something into this and in Sweden we have a specific clinical part of our department of neuroscience at one of our big universities of health and they did this experience on rats and actually they do these tests on rats to see how the effects of ammunitions the how much blood and tissue loss they do so they did this controlled test they strapped these rats into these fittings and then they do controlled explosions close to their head and they found very strangely they had they couldn't find any good results from these tests so they discarded the test and then when they went back then looked at why there was such bad results they realized that half the times they did tests on male rats and half the time on female rats you always keep the population separate obviously because they they become too many rats otherwise and this is what they found out that in the male head and the frontal lobe were an important part of our our brain and features male rats tend to get a much stronger inflammatory reaction in the frontal lobe probably due to they have this hormone called prostaglandine and and while they saw that female rats did not experience the same kind of brain trauma due to this exposure probably due to the female hormone instead of progesterone which has an anti-inflammatory course to the frontal lobe I mean that's so interesting and something that's not very well researched and on a parentheses here a lot of medic medications and how we survive a trauma is mostly researched on fairly healthy young college students that's and also that's interesting too we don't really know how all the medications and all the treatments they do affect men and women differently so there's just clearly medical and and the sex specific reasons why we need to break down the effects of weapon on on men and women and the third area obviously is that there is growing recognition within the international community that we need to address the how conflict and how weapons affect men and women differently and the security council resolution 3025 on the women peace and security agenda obviously has stressed this issue but there is also other aspects we know that article five on the convention on cluster munitions specifically in the convention mentions gendered aspects that need to be addressed when in relation to those weapons so those were just some examples of why we should have a the gender analysis on weapons and then if we move on to how do we do this a lot of thing it's a lot about how we test the weapons obviously both on medical but also how we imagine they are to be used we know that gender differences between men and women on their status their function in society create different vulnerabilities to different types of weapons we also know that men and women boys and girls can also have different coping mechanisms they can have different access to key services perhaps women sometimes they have can easier access healthcare facilities sometimes we know they cannot these are obviously fairly geographically and context specifics but it's i mean it's there something i also find interesting is that we all have gendered glasses we all view how men and women what they are what they shouldn't do i mean it's it's within us and i was so surprised when i was reading the you know the ccw convention on mines has a list of what is banned from booby trapping and obviously there's stuff like toys kitchen utensils but i mean a lot of the typically female stuff you can't booby trap but it's fine to booby trap agricultural equipment for example and i mean why there's no logical reason to that it's just because i think the perception is that's like male stuff so i mean why should that be more booby trappable not sure that's a word but but i mean so i'm just highlighting some issues that we need to wear the gender glasses we need to take them off sometimes but we need to have that as admiral said earlier i mean it's critical thinking and just add this in the mix when looking at how to deploy military opiations what types of force to use it just adds something and at the end it strengthens what we all want good clear non-discriminatory application of it so thank you thank you very much Cecilia that was a very interesting look at how it can be integrated into a weapons legal review our next panelist will be Michelle Jarvis and she will address integrating a gender analysis into her work in analyzing unlawful attacks and in the criminal justice realm Michelle thank you very much major trago and can i just check you can hear me okay before i proceed with the presentation excellent it's it's always good to know given the online format thank you so much it really is such a pleasure to be part of this panel and i think the topic of discussion is so important across many different aspects of the work that we're all doing many different interconnected components of it represented on the panel today so i'm really delighted to be able to be part of the discussion and to be able to contribute the perspective of international criminal law when it comes to this topic um Cecilia i think you've given just such an excellent foundation for the presentation that i want to give because of course when we're talking about international criminal law many of the aspects that you talked about Cecilia are what ends up in the dossiers that we are putting together and trying to work out where individual criminal responsibility may lie for certain conduct and how to present that conduct in terms of crime categories and and damage inflicted so this is i think part of a spectrum of areas where we really need to be thinking with those gender glasses as you said so for me today what i'm going to focus on is efforts to integrate gender perspectives into international criminal law and by that i mean the relevance of a gender analysis to our efforts to prosecute core international crimes such as war crimes crimes against humanity and genocide and of course IHL has a really central role in international criminal law it is the basis for war crimes prosecutions of course the provisions are derived directly from international humanitarian law but even when it comes to crimes against humanity and genocide IHL still remains a very important reference point for working out the parameters of what is illegal conduct in in the context of those crime categories so IHL is really central to the work that we're doing as international criminal justice practitioners what I'm going to do is draw on my own experience as a war crimes prosecutor for the last 20 or so years starting off with a big focus on war crimes prosecutions relating to the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s and I also did some work in relation to the cases that were prosecuted concerning the genocide in Rwanda and now as as Major Tregal mentioned I'm the Deputy Head of the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria better known as the triple I am given that it is quite a mouthful to say the full title and we've definitely seen over the course of my career a really important evolution in thinking about the relevance of gender to international criminal law I think especially the ongoing work on accountability for Syria represents a very important opportunity for us to be thinking afresh about how we integrate gender perspectives into this area of law and practice. Certainly the as I mentioned IHL and military operations have been a central feature of my work over the last 20 years because very often as we're applying international criminal law we are being called on to adjudicate the responsibility of individuals for events connected to conflict in general but of course military operations specifically and we've seen how important it is to integrate a gender perspective into this work but up until now I would have to say that the progress has been quite limited in international criminal law there has of course been an increased focus on the specific issue of sexual violence in conflict over the last decade or so and definitely considerable rhetoric around the commitment to accountability for sexual violence crimes even if I think we still have a lot of work to do in that regard but I think the message for me today is really about the need to urgently expand our gender analysis into other areas of international criminal law so that we don't become unduly fixated on this one issue of conflict related sexual violence important as it is. In particular those parts of international criminal law that are drawn from the law of the Hague I would say have been relatively impervious to gender analysis and critique up until now and it is a challenging area for international criminal law in general trying to prosecute crimes based on unlawful attacks against the civilian population and particularly disproportionate attacks have not featured in many international criminal law cases because evidentially they can be extremely challenging for a whole range of reasons but still we do now need to be thinking more comprehensively about how gender is relevant to these cases and how a gender analysis could improve the quality of accountability for the affected communities. So in my presentation today I'm going to first of all explain a little bit about the mandate and the work of the triple IM the mechanism for Syria and the way that we're seeking to integrate a gender strategy into all of our work to establish foundations for accountability for Syria and then I'll turn to the specific issue of agenda analysis in the context of work to establish accountability for unlawful attacks against civilians in the Syrian context. For us at the triple IM this aspect is very much a work in progress there are relatively few legal precedents and very few when it comes to integrating agenda analysis into these cases so that's why I believe it really is important that we have discussions like the one we're having today and that even if we don't have all of the answers yet it is very important that we start at least asking the right questions. So to turn to the mandate of the triple IM I can start out by saying it is still a relatively new kid on the international criminal justice landscape. It was a body established by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2016. I think the severity of the conflict in Syria is very well known but just to remind of some of the key statistics forming the backdrop to the triple IM's creation over the course of the the conflict in Syria civil society actors have documented deaths of nearly 400 000 people with more than 200 000 others documented as missing presumed dead. More than half of the pre-war population of 22 million have fled their homes. We have 6.7 million internally displaced and 5.6 million registered as refugees abroad. The NGO Physicians for Human Rights has documented 350 separate attacks on medical facilities and we know of course that there have been a high number of attacks on other civilian objects such as schools and allegations of repeated chemical weapons usage. So against that backdrop the United Nations General Assembly acted to establish the triple IM with quite a novel mandate which was really a result of political blockages in the Security Council at the time which meant that the Syrian situation could not be referred to the International Criminal Court and that there was no prospect of establishing an ad hoc court or tribunal as was done for the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda. Since then we've seen the triple IM's mandate replicated in some ways. We now have a similar mechanism for Myanmar but at the time it was definitely a novel move by the United Nations General Assembly. So to explain why it's so novel, well it's not a court or tribunal but it's conceived of as a justice facilitator or a justice enabler and it's been mandated to collect, consolidate and preserve evidence of serious crimes in Syria from March 2011 onwards. So effectively to create foundations for justice in Syria even if the cases can't always be brought today in a specific jurisdiction. To drill down a little bit more into what it is that we do on a daily basis at the triple IM, first of all we're building a comprehensive central repository of information and evidence of crimes committed in Syria. So we're collecting material from a broad range of providers, those actors who've been documenting crimes committed in Syria from the very first days of the uprising and secondly we are analysing the material and building case files for criminal law purposes that can be used by others. In the short term that means that we're focused on assisting national war crimes units in national jurisdictions who are active on cases involving Syria, perhaps using universal or extraterritorial jurisdiction and some of you may have heard about some recent judgments coming out of a court in Koblenz in Germany convicting former members of or one former member of the Syrian intelligence service of crimes against humanity for the mistreatment of detainees and second accused is still standing trial in Koblenz. So the triple IM is providing evidence analysis and expertise to support these sorts of investigations and prosecutions that are going on in national jurisdictions. In the longer term we're also preserving evidence, preparing analysis and case files that could be used by a future court that may be set up to deal with Syria or perhaps an existing one like the international criminal court that could acquire jurisdiction in the future. We don't report publicly on our work so the substance of our analysis and our case files remain strictly confidential but I can say that our current areas of focus are on detention related crimes, unlawful attacks including allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria and we also have thematic projects on sexual and gender-based crimes and crimes against children. The triple IM is is based in Geneva on the grounds of the Palais Denassium and we currently have around 55 staff members including investigators, analysts, lawyers and information management officers. So it's quite a small streamlined operation compared to some of the courts and tribunals historically but certainly we have a really meaningful opportunity to start preparing for justice for Syria. Turning then to the triple IM's gender strategy if you look at the triple IM's terms of reference you will see some specific references to gender. For example it's mandated that the head of the mechanism and the deputy myself must have a commitment to upholding gender equality that's quite groundbreaking language for an accountability body we've not seen that in bodies that have been created previously and there's also specific reference to giving due consideration to the appointment of experts on sexual and gender-based violence and it's really a recognition of the historical tendency to overlook or mischaracterize these crimes. We know that accountability outcomes have not been as strong as we would like in these areas and so there is a commitment to proactive steps to try and address that in the context of the triple IM. Very much we are drawing on lessons learned from the past 25 years of particularly the ad hoc courts and tribunals and seeking to apply these into our work at the triple IM. So one of the the fundamental insights as I mentioned is the need for a very proactive gender strategy to guide all of our work. We know we still have a lot of work to do in helping staff members understand why gender is important in international criminal law and why it matters to the outcome of our cases and for me I think one of the most compelling examples of what Cecilia was talking about as well the obvious fact that conflict has a differential impact on men, women, girls and boys but we don't always start our analysis with that in mind but the the case that really drove that home for me was the events in Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 and these events formed a number of cases at the Yugoslav Tribunal where I worked. As you may know a very gendered impact you had the men and boys rounded up separated from the women children and elderly taken to holding sites and then executed on mass. The men at the women children and the elderly rounded up and forcibly expelled from the Srebrenica enclave into Bosnian Muslim held territory. So shocking treatment for all categories of victims but so important that the tribunal did not just focus on the execution of the men to the exclusion of the expulsion of the women children and the elderly otherwise the cases prosecuted by the tribunal might have overlooked the classification of what happened in Srebrenica as a genocide. Ultimately the court found that it was genocide by looking at the combined impact of killing the men and boys and displacing the women children and elderly within the overall gendered context of the Bosnian Muslim community including its diminished reproductive capacity. So very compelling reminder of how it is important for accountability overall to have this gendered lens to be looking at what's happening to all categories and making sure that we connect those events together and adequately address them all. At the triple IM we do have a comprehensive written gender strategy and we're really seeking to make sure that we integrate that gender lens into everything that we do into the creation of our institutional environment, the development of methodologies and tools, the way we collect and organize our information and evidence, the way that we analyze it using gender competent approaches and the way that we integrate gender perspectives into our engagement with other accountability actors like those national criminal justice actors that I mentioned, civil society actors and other UN actors. So some of the questions that we're asking ourselves in our work at the triple IM include how has gender been a factor driving the violence? Are the perpetrators objectives linked to the gender of the victim and if so how can we reflect that in the criminal cases that we prepare? We're looking at in what ways has gender influenced the harms inflicted? Even when it comes to sexual violence which can of course affect both males and females, the form and impact of the violence varies due to gender factors and it's important that we reflect that in our cases. We're looking at ways that gender bias might be influencing our own approach to documentation. Are we overlooking certain experiences due to gender factors? Are we over prioritizing certain experiences due to gender factors? And we also need a clear understanding about how gender factors might be causing barriers to our investigations. Are victims inhibited or prevented from coming forward due to gender factors and how can we as an accountability body try to adopt strategies to overcome that? So turning then in the last few minutes of my presentation to looking at the specific issue of unlawful attacks. So I mentioned that part of our focus currently is on looking at the unlawful attacks that have occurred in Syria including the allegations of chemical weapons usage and as part of our implementation of our gender strategy we are seeking to integrate agenda analysis into this aspect of our work as well. An obvious place to start is making sure that the experiences and perspectives of females and males and the distinctive harms they suffer as a result of unlawful attacks are adequately reflected in the documentation we compile and the case files that we build. This sounds obvious but it is more of a challenge than might be initially appreciated. We've seen a historical trend of female experiences and voices being significantly underrepresented in accountability processes. So for example the Yugoslav tribunals 25 years of work women represented only 13 percent of witnesses brought forward to testify and the AAAM's work also identifies a similar trend in existing documentation on crimes in Syria. So in our initial phase we've collected a lot of material already collected by other actors who are working on Syria and we can see the underrepresentation of perspectives of women including when it comes to documentation on unlawful attacks and chemical weapons in particular. So at the AAAM we are very committed to filling these gaps and we see some glimmers of hope as well in terms of greater awareness of this issue by civil society also. For example a very interesting study was released late last year by the Global Public Policy Institute otherwise known as GPPI called the last straw how chemical weapons impact women and break communities. So they've really made a very proactive effort to interview female survivors of chemical weapons attacks as well as first responders who can speak to the experience of women. What it confirmed is definitely the disproportionate effect of chemical weapons on women and children in Syria both in terms of direct and immediate effects as well as longer term consequences especially around issues of reproductive and maternal health. And their conclusion is that women have a higher mortality rate due to chemical attacks but also experience gender specific physiological and mental health consequences as well as obstacles to care and recovery. And I think it is worth just concluding with a quote from the report because it really underscores the crucial importance of paying more attention to this issue in the work that we're all doing. So they write, investigating the effects that indiscriminate forms of violence like chemical weapons attacks have on women reveals a pervasive structural gender bias in the reporting and primary data collection on such violations in Syria. This gender bias has led to gaps in the international community's targeted policy measures. In addition, informants on the ground such as journalists, medical practitioners, local authorities and first responders are predominantly male. As women in conservative Syria often shy away from discussing vulnerable experiences with men, much of the material they encountered lacked female voices. The research clearly demonstrates the need for local and international organizations and courts to actively seek out female perspectives in order to develop a full picture of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. So a compelling call for greater attention and definitely something we are committed to following through on at the Triple IM. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Our next panelist will be Paula Ayodowska and she will talk to gender perspectives as a military capability. Paula. Yeah. Thank you, Major Trikel. Is the sound okay? Yeah. All right. Great. Well, I just wanted to start by thanking Stockton Center and the U.S. Naval War College for inviting us today for organizing this panel discussion, which we think is very important and certainly very interesting. A little daunting to present all our activities in this short time slot and especially following such excellent panelists as Ms. Jarvis and Ms. Tingrod. But I just wanted to express my appreciation for their presentations, which I think set the ground and really articulate the intersections between IHL and gender. As was mentioned in the introduction in this presentation, I will try to demonstrate a more operational approach to these questions by describing our work here at the Nordic Center for Gender and Military Operations. And in fact, I just wanted to pick up on something that Professor Kroskal mentioned in his introduction in regard to how the Stockton Center has aimed to merge the two areas of curriculum, the strategy and international law. And I would like to think that that is something we have at least started to do at the NCGM and certainly something that we aim for. So in my presentation, I will start by giving a short overview of the NCGM and who we are. And then I will talk a little bit about what we mean when we talk about gender and military operations and gender as a capability enhancer. And finally, I will give a short overview of some of the tools and resources we have developed at the NCGM to promote the integration of gender perspective into military operations. Is my PowerPoint presentation up? Oh, great. Thank you very much. Yeah. So next slide, please. Yep. Thank you. Sorry. Great. So the Nordic Center for Gender and Military Operations was established in 2012 as the result of increased efforts by the Nordic countries to implement Security Council Resolution 1325 into military operations. It was established under the umbrella of the Nordic Defense Cooperation, Nordefko, by Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. And we have since then also been reinforced by a personnel deployed from the Netherlands and Canada. We are currently hosted by the Swedish Armed Forces in Stockholm, Sweden. And we are at the moment the only international organization focusing exclusively on gender and military operations. Our scope of work and responsibilities has widened over the years. And in 2013, NCGM was appointed as NATO Department Head for the Gender and Military Operations Discipline. And this means that we serve as a center of expertise for NATO in all gender related aspects and also manage this training portfolio within NATO. So the table on the screen shows the three-hatted role that NCGM has come to play and some of the activities we engage in. In addition to being an expert center in gender, we are also a NATO accredited education and training facility responsible for providing ENT solutions in support of building capacity and capabilities for both NCGM nations and NATO allies and partners. And finally, I'd also like to mention that within our region-to-region framework, we have engaged in regional capacity building in eight Western Balkan nations with a lot of emphasis on training local gender trainers. We have also had exchanges relating to gender and security sector reform with nations such as the Ukraine, Jordan, Malda, and Georgia. Next slide, please. Right, so what is it that we actually do and how does that tie into today's discussion? Well, at the NCGM, we approach gender and the use of gender perspective as a military capability. And what does that mean in practice? We believe that applying a gender perspective through, for instance, the use of sex and age disaggregated data and gender analysis can, in many situations, give us a better understanding of a particular operational context. And this in turn allows our forces to respond more adequately and effectively, and therefore increase mission success, such as, for instance, establishing a safe and secure environment, as well as enhance or force protection. In other words, we see that in many instances, applying a gender perspective feeds into situational awareness and will increase our operational effectiveness. On the other hand, failing to apply a gender analysis can easily result in a failure to see the different security needs of different population groups, but also the different security threats that such groups may pose. So in parallel to such operational concerns, we are also very much cognizant of the existing legal framework relevant to the conduct of military operations, including international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law, as well as the international commitments made within the scope of the Women's Peace and Security Agenda. And similar to what was discussed by the two other panelists, we believe that to truly implement IHL effectively and in accordance with its original purpose, a gender perspective is indeed necessary. With all that being said, and before I proceed into some concrete examples, it is important at the outset to identify that when we speak of gender analysis and gender perspective, we are not just talking about women, we are talking about men, women, boys, and girls. And this may be obvious to some in the audience, but we certainly do still encounter misconceptions on this point. Next slide, please. So the following are some examples of situations where we believe that a gender perspective may be essential to ensure successful operational outcomes. There may be both internal and external factors that need to be considered, and sometimes the two may intertwine. I will discuss some of the examples on the screen. As I'm sure everyone in the audience is aware, most peacekeeping or peace enforcing missions today include the protection of civilians mandates. And as was also said by the previous panelists, it has been quite recognized by now that conflict and violence affect men and women, boys and girls differently. It's therefore crucial to understand how the roles, needs, and opportunities of the affected population differ to successfully fill such POC mandates. And understanding and addressing such questions is also likely to impact on the conditions for establishing a more sustainable peace in the area of operations. Now, with regard to conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence, obviously a huge topic when we are talking about the gender perspective. At the NCGM, we focus on what the military's role is in preventing it and how it can be addressed once observed. So preventing and addressing CRSGBB is an essential part of fulfilling any protection mandate and is also often crucial for de-escalation and future attempts at peace building. A gender analysis is required to detect early signs, which may indicate the occurrence of CRSGBB. And conversely, incidents of CRSGBB may also be indicative of a worsening conflict dynamic in the area of operations. Training military personnel on CRSGBB is a key focus area for NCGM. We include sessions on CRSGBB in all our courses and seminars. This means that we are training and educating on CRSGBB on all levels from tactical to the operational and strategic. And it is important to include CRSGBB training on all levels to ensure response, commitment, and action throughout the chain of command. Indeed, the NATO military guidelines and the prevention of a response to CRSGBB put an obligation on all staff that encounter CRSGBB to report through the chain of command. And to be able to report correctly, they need an understanding of the complexities of CRSGBB. So here at NCGM, we aim to secure that the soldiers on the ground as well as their immediate and superior commanders have the right training to write comprehensive reports and are used to inform operational and strategic leadership. We also analyze the use of CRSGBB as a tactic of war and how it hinders the restoration of peace. And as mentioned earlier, we how in some instances increased levels of CRSGBB may indicate an escalation of the conflict. Another point is that training military personnel in a NATO mission may lead to a double effect. The NATO guidelines on CRSGBB highlight that NATO personnel should include CRSGBB when training local security forces. This is another avenue to spread the understanding and knowledge of CRSGBB. And we believe that training on this issue from military to military can have a very positive effect. Last point on the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse. While this is strictly speaking more an issue of misconduct to be investigated and addressed by the legal advisor and the provost Marshall, a gender perspective is necessary to understand and possibly advise on the gender related aspects and implications it might have. So the gender advisor should therefore be made aware of such incidents as it feeds into their gender analysis, especially if it for instance changes how the local population feels about your forces on the ground. Next slide please. Here is a couple of other contexts or scenarios where gender perspective might be relevant and helpful. There's the question of key leader engagement. Who are the leaders in your area of operation? Are you considering women who might be formal or informal leaders in a community and are their voices being heard? Targeting, I think this was discussed by the two panelists. We talk also about forced generation and retention. This ties into the value of having for instance mixed engagement teams. Monitoring and reporting, we already mentioned sex and they disaggregated data and how extremely important that is to be able to do anything. And finally this is quite an interesting point. It is the use of gender norms or roles by enemy forces. For instance the use of female combatants and this is sort of where we need to start thinking about what pre-existing misconceptions we might be going in with and how that might be used against us. Can I have the next slide please? So here I just wanted to give an overview of what a military gender structure might look like. I have used the existing structure employed by NATO and NATO strives to have trained and skilled gender advisors so called gen eds and gender focal points. GFPs deployed to all NATO led operations as well as full and part-time positions throughout the NATO command structure to enhance their capabilities. The gender advisor is there to support and facilitate the commander in line with the Alliance directions and guidance. This is a cross-functional matter. The gen ed is supporting all J divisions. However, at the end of the day the gen ed works for one boss and that is the commander. And the overall intention is that the gen ed supports the commander and the rest of the staff to integrate gender in their respective tasks and activities but is not just doing the gender stuff on their own. The gender focal point will have a dual-headed position that supports their own functional area with integrating gender perspective into their daily work or the work products. The GFP maintains a functional dialogue with the gen ed but reports within the chain of command. And throughout the United Nations, the European Union and other organizations, there are similar gender advisor functions also embedded to ensure gender mainstreaming within missions and activities as well as policies and programs. Next slide please. Finally, I just wanted to break down a bit how integrating gender across staff functions might look like. The method for integrating the use of gender perspective is gender mainstreaming. That means that possible implications for men and women should be assessed in any planned action in all areas and at all levels. Meaning by everyone and in all processes including, for example, in planning, operations, training, recruitment, policy, development, etc. Another misconception we come across is that gender is only the area of the J9 CMIC people. So this is the method that's recognized by NATO and other organizations on how to make sure that everything that we do is with the gender perspective. And yeah, it's important to keep in mind that integrating gender perspective is not the responsibility of the gen ed or the GFP. It's a leadership task that the gen ed and the GFP support. They do that using that functional dialogue during all phases of planning and operations within the HQ staff functions for J code structure. Next slide please. Can I have the next slide? Okay. If we could jump ahead. Yeah, thank you. Perfect. So in this last part of my presentation, I want to focus on some of the activities and tools developed by the NCGM to help military organizations understand and integrate gender perspective in their work. As mentioned at the outset, we have a triple-headed role and as such, we engage in a lot of different types of activities, but I would like to in particular highlight our training solutions, as well as some recent publications that may be useful for some of you in the audience. The NCGM offers a number of NATO approved courses that cover all organizational levels from political, military, strategic level to tactical level, and can be delivered either as residential courses, online courses, or through mobile education training teams. We also occasionally tailor solutions to particular requests. These can be requests from particular nations that are delivered by NCGM on the ground. For instance, last year, we delivered a senior leader seminar on gender to the leadership at NATO shape. Finally, we also recognize and cooperate with other centers, and for instance, Bosnia, Croatia, Bulgaria, to develop solutions that meet NATO requirements, which can then be delivered by those actors independently. And the number of applicants, as well as graduates from NCGM courses and training solutions has steadily grown over the past years. On average, over the years, we have graduated nearly 300 students from our courses per year. Next slide, please. Before finishing, I also wanted to present some of the tools and publications that NCGM has developed. Firstly, I would like to introduce what we refer to as the MGAT, the military gender analysis tool, which is geared towards gender advisors in GFPs to enable them to perform a gender analysis of a particular operational setting. He uses the established Tamisi structure, which examines political, military, economic, social, infrastructure, and information variables, and adds gender indicators to support the analysis. The NCGM has also worked on producing the guide for gender perspective integration and exercises. This guide follows the four stages of the exercise planning process, and is complementary to NATO BISIC 075003 on collective training and exercises. It aims to assist with the effective integration of gender perspective throughout the entire exercise planning process. And the main target audience for the guide are gender subject matter experts and exercise planners on the strategic operation and tactical levels. The guide will be tested during NATO exercise steadfast Jupiter 2021. Thirdly, I would like to introduce a publication that we refer to as the WPS guide, a military guide to the UN Security Council resolutions on Women, Peace, and Security. In this publication, which was launched just in November last year, we have analyzed resolution 1325 and the nine related resolutions that followed. And we have extrapolated the particular responsibilities and obligations that they place on the military. The idea behind the guide is to make the commitments from the WPS resolutions more accessible to the military. And we also provide some suggested examples of how they can be addressed or implemented in the military context. And finally, I would just like to draw your attention to our publication title, Whose Security, which provides best practices and lessons learned with regard to implementing a gender perspective on the tactical level. We are currently in the process of updating it with some more recent material, but there is a number of real life examples in there that really illustrate the importance of integrating a gender analysis into military operations. And final slide please. Yes, so this concludes my presentation. Thank you very much again for the invitation. Thank you to the audience for listening. And this is just a link to our website. Should you wish to find some more information? Thank you very much. Thank you Paula. At this point, we're going to open it up to a discussion among the panel members and answer some questions from the audience. To start off the discussion, I'd like to ask each of you, when we're talking about integrating a gender perspective and doing a gender analysis, because the law is, in essence, with certain exceptions, gender neutral, what exactly is the result of a gender analysis? Say the gender analysis demonstrates an attack or a weapon would have a disparate impact on a certain gender or sex. What does that, what does that information do? Does that mean it's a legal attack or how does that play in whoever would like to take that? I can just start. I mean, that's a huge question. But just one aspect of that would be to say that, I mean, in IHL, you have the term superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering. That's not a mathematical equation of what needs to happen, how much blood loss or kind of trauma. That's something that would obviously vary depending on who you are, what role you have in society, what kind of function you play, your body mass. So that's one example where like hardcore IHL rules would be beneficial of an IHL and gender analysis. So I'll just give that example. Go ahead, Michelle. Thank you. Yeah, I think this is a question that my field of practice international criminal has really been grappling with over this sort of 25 years since the ad hoc courts and tribunals were set up. Because initially the legal framework, for example, if you look at the statute of the Yugoslav tribunal, if you look at the crime categories listed, they do on their face look very gender neutral, I would say. So you had things specified in there such as torture or a crime against humanity of enslavement. And so it took quite some time during the work of the Yugoslav tribunal to understand that even those seemingly general crime categories did have gendered aspects to them, or at least they could be interpreted that way if we had the correct gender lens. So to give the example of torture, for example, historically the kinds of pain and suffering inflicted in the context of a torture situation had never really been understood to include something like sexual violence. And it was only over time as we became more aware of our own biases in looking at these seemingly neutral legal categories that we understood the need to really challenge that kind of thinking and say, actually, in addition to some of the more traditional methods of torture that have been well recognized, inflicting sexual violence of different sorts can certainly be severe pain and suffering. And so really reorienting our legal thinking. Another example that I was involved in over the course of my work is looking at a crime like genocide. I mean, initially people thought that there was no gender perspective to be had on the crime of genocide. You know, genocide is really very well defined crimes. Most people think about it as killing with a specific intent to destroy. But conflicts like Rwanda and even the former Yugoslavia really challenged that because it was clear that sexual violence was part and parcel of the conduct that had happened. And to the extent that that could be classified as genocide, why would you separate out the sexual violence from all the other conduct that was going on in pursuit of this objective? And so looking at the actus raus of genocide and and elements like serious bodily and mental harm and saying, well, why could sexual violence not constitute an example of serious bodily and mental harm for the purposes of the crime of genocide? But initially, there was a lot of resistance around that because of these preconceptions about what falls within and outside these crime categories. I think the other interesting development over the course of the last two and a half decades has been not only the reinterpretation of these general provisions from a gender perspective, but also the development of crime categories that more expressly address gendered aspects of conflict as well. So if you look at the statute for the International Criminal Court, you see a number of very specific categories related to sexual and gender based violence. For example, something like sexual enslavement is now expressly listed, but also articulation of gender based persecution as a discriminatory ground that could be the basis for a prosecution is a new development, but certainly based on well grounded legal principles. Paula, did you have something to add? Well, I think it's an excellent question and I certainly don't have the answer to it strictly legally speaking. I do think it is something we hopefully will think about more going forward. I can only compare it to, for instance, the debates and discussions that are taking place with regard to attacks on urban areas and densely populated areas and how those reverberating effects, you know, how much do you consider to be the effect of the attack and how does that go into your equation or targeting balancing exercise? But I think it is important that we ask the question, what does it mean and who is impacted? And I think maybe there has been a tendency to not see everyone who is affected by it and at least that move away from that is a good first stepping stone. Cecilia, there's a question from the audience. It says, for weapons, would a gender perspective need to be used in the targeting cell in theater, determine how men and women in theater's context would be affected by how the weapon is employed? And I think that they're kind of taking it away from the initial weapons legal review, like when you're getting a new weapon, but in the use of the weapon is where I think that they're looking at. Pretty much a similar question to the previous one there. I mean, what does it entail in practice then? Because I could just add on to what Paula mentioned. I think that IHL also and gender also plays a role when it comes to, I mean, the principle of distinction we should assert is that a legitimate military target and also assess what are the effects that can be assessed? And will this impact the civilians or will it impact a clear military object? And I mean, there was a lot of debate in the 90s about the first Gulf War when the power structure of Iraq was taken out. And obviously, that was an immediate effect. Very clear precision attacks taking those system out. But the secondary effect or the indirect effects of those types of effects was hospitals and also the sewage system of Iraq being indisposed, leading to secondary effects. I mean, that sparked the question of how long do you as attacking have a responsibility to ensure that the effects of an attack, what they are, and do you need to assess all of that? Obviously, the legal debate on this issue is there is not a consensus on this. I know that the US opinion on this is one and the smaller states have another. But I mean, it's the same kind of question when it comes to gender. Do you have a responsibility to also assess the more long term or cascading effects of a military attack or the use of a specific weapon? I mean, knowing that perhaps there is no access for hospitals for women and children, knowing that men cannot pass through checkpoints to access healthcare facilities. I mean, once again, it's putting on the gender perspective glasses on these issues. And I think it's the thinking and also doing proper battle damage assessment, really checking who was affected, who was targeted, what was the casualties in the use of that specific weapon. I mean, when you do the planning to make sure what time during the day in the morning, what kind of people are moving about during specific times, the weapons will have different effects on different populations, including men and women. So just adding that into the mix. It's just to piggyback on that a little bit. So often when we talk about gender perspectives, people just think it's the different sexes and how it impacts those. But when we talk about gender, we really are talking about more than just sex. And do any of you have thoughts on how outside of the sex binary, how a gender perspective could potentially play in? And have you seen that play out? Michelle would say something. Yeah, I can add a couple of comments on that. Definitely. And I think that has been one of the challenges for us in international criminal law practices, helping our practitioners understand that what we're really talking about are gender constructs. It's not about biological sex per se. I mean, that can be relevant, of course, but it is more about understanding how those roles that are ascribed to men, women, girls and boys in a particular cultural context play out in a conflict situation and how that needs to inform the types of inquiries that we're making when we're investigating what has happened during a conflict. And I can go back to the Srebrenica example that I talked about, where you had that very gendered impact with the women, children and elderly being subjected to one type of treatment, the men and boys being subjected to another. And that's really based on gender constructs ascribed roles. So the men and boys being perceived as combatants or potential combatants, the women, children and elderly being separated off and forced out of the area. And I think the point is to understand those gender roles, to understand how that played out in the conflict and what the impact of that treatment on each category in combination was. Because at the end of the day, so much of this conduct is directed towards having an impact on a community group. So a crime like genocide, if you're thinking about the destruction of the group, what does it take to destroy a group? It's based on the relationships between the members of that group and community. So understanding how those relationships are gendered is crucially important in figuring out what kind of label we should put on the crime in question. And I would just say the other thing that we find extremely important at the triple IM is taking an intersectional approach to our analysis. So of course, gender is one of those identity markers that really influences people's experience of conflict, but it doesn't operate in isolation. So we need to be keeping in mind how gender might intersect with race or ethnicity or age or sexual orientation to influence the particular treatment that a group or an individual experiences. Great. Thank you. Paula, I believe this question is for you. Do you see that different staff sections need specialized training and how to implement a gender perspective for their role in command? Or is it kind of a one size fits all kind of perspective? I mean, I hate to say that with gender because we all know gender is not one size fits all. But is there a need for specialized training based on what a certain person may do? Sure. Thank you. It's a good question. What we currently distinguish between here at the NCGM is the courses we deliver for GFPs. Those are the staff visitors that are dual headed, where you are in your staff cells, that your unit, but also have some gender responsibility. And then we have a course for gender advisors, which is ideally not always, but ideally a full time position. And it can be placed at different levels in the organization that is a sort of longer, more in depth course. And then we also have trainings and seminars for the leadership level, where, as I mentioned in NATO, it is explicitly mentioned that it is the leadership's responsibility to implement gender perspective throughout NATO operations. And of course, maybe the approach to training higher level ranking officials will be a little bit different. So we recognize that to that extent, whether you should provide gender training specialized to every particular unit. I mean, I don't know, perhaps I may be in an ideal word with resources and the time to do that. I don't know. I can't speak to whether we have considered that idea. But right now we certainly differentiate between the full time positions and those that are sort of gender related. Okay, I think we have time for one more question. This one says, can you please elaborate more about what happens to men and women who perpetually live in conflict zone areas and children, the areas which are merely used for battle up front combat. Does anybody have a comment on how that plays into people that are just find themselves in conflict areas, not necessarily as combatants, but merely being impacted by conflict. But I'm currently working at the Swedish Red Cross and we have a fairly large international department and we do a lot of support and also have staff in Yemen, in Syria and Afghanistan. And so from that perspective, I mean, the answer is obviously that any effects of war in the long term, it's exhausting. It's extremely complicated. It gives both physical and psychosocial effects. If I try to hone in on gender aspects on that, we also see that what happens in an armed conflict and I mean, both in weak states and also in like strong states is that war does affect gender roles and the roles and function men and women do play out. We see that in refugee camps. We also see and we recognize that that cultures who have very strong inherently gendered structures, it's not good that they cannot be sustained to a certain level. So one example, instead of us providing just prepared food in long lineups, we provide the families, the women with a kid so they can still cook the food. We include sugar in these release, the food packages, because drinking tea, men can sit and drink tea is part of their culture. I mean, it's easier. I'm a Swedish liberated person in one of the most liberated countries in the world. It's so easy for me to sit here and say gender is really important, but it has to be really dealt with delicately with care because in so many cultures, gender structures, I might find them really bad and awful, but it's their structure. We also need to be very respectful of what that culture consists of and how what they want their culture or society to be. So we try to moderate around that. Okay, thank you so much, Colonel Cherry, where you, we are out of time. Good, thank you so much, Heather. And thank you for our panelists for very interesting and fantastic presentation. This is the first of this sort here at the Stocking Center to cover gender perspectives. So we thank you very much and look forward to continued partnerships in the future on these issues. And of course, to Heather for your hard work in setting this panel up. So thank you again to all of our audience for joining us. And again, we invite you to join us at the conference on Ocean's Law and Policy, which is going on for the next two days. And of course, next week from May 17th and 19th for our third annual Alexander C. Cushing conference. And you can find information on the Stockton Center website, which I posted in the chat on both of those events to include also the links directly to their information pages. And last but not least, we encourage you to follow us on Twitter at Stockton Center. Thank you very much for joining us again today and have a great rest of your week.