 Hello, my name is Commander Andrea Cameron and welcome to this virtual conference about human security in the maritime environment. This conference explores the human security concept applied to the strategic maritime environment. We have a specific focus on its implications for the roles, missions and capabilities of national sea services. First, let me direct you to the events page where you can download the conference program for the event. The conference program has the full agenda and biographies of all the participants. Before we proceed, I have to thank my conference co-organizer and the Captain Jerome E. Levy Chair of Economic Geography, Dr. Chris Gispero, as well as the Naval War College Foundation for sponsoring this conference today. It is through their generosity that today's event is made possible. Today's conference starts with the concept of human security. For almost four centuries, our international system has been built based on states and state interests. When we think of security, we typically think of it in this context, national security, or the security of our state. However, while the state might be secure, perhaps not all of the people in it have the same sense of security. Are they individually living in insecure situations? Do they have the opportunity for a livelihood? Or are their human rights protected? When you change the unit of analysis from the state to the individual for security, you find that billions of people on the planet do not have their human security. The United Nations adopted the concept of human security in the early 1990s with this people-centered reframing. And at their words, human security is to protect the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfillment. Human security means that protecting fundamental freedoms, freedoms that are the essence of life. It means protecting people from critical and pervasive threats and situations. From the latest human security handbook, you can see that types of human security are described in the inverse. Economic insecurity, food insecurity, health insecurity, environment insecurity, personal insecurity, community insecurity, and political insecurity. As you look at the possible root causes of each on this chart, start to think about how these might be experienced by people transiting or working in the maritime environment. This new framing also fundamentally alters our concept of what leads to instability and conflict. The concept posits that when local human security needs are not adequately assured, it causes disruptions in the local security environment. When these problems, they may not just stay individual or local, they can evolve directly into national security concerns causing domestic instability within countries. They can also percolate up, causing international security problems as unmet human security needs cross from one country into another. In 2017, we at the Naval War College created a human security studies group. We wanted to build a forum across campus for faculty, staff, and students interested in these nontraditional and transnational security issues. Within a year, the climate topic drew a lot of interest and we renamed the group Climate and Human Security Group. Since then, we've been offering more and more opportunities for faculty and students, and we've started outreach to include those interested who are off campus. What we began to notice over the past few years is that the concept of human security is starting to be adopted in a military context. What's evolved is the recognition that there's people, individuals, civilians, affected by conflict and military operations. And the term used to address individual human security needs is being applied to the military programs that try to protect the people. It's largely adopted as an umbrella term, something that pulls together everything from civilian casualty mitigation to protection of civilians, or specific cross-cutting issues like children in armed conflict or sexual exploitation and abuse. I found the connection of a people-centric security concept being operationalized by militaries fascinating. But I also noticed was that as this concept is developing, it was overlooking offshore human security issues. It was this observation that led us to start thinking about a forum where navies around the world could get together and start thinking about what human security issues might apply to them and what are they doing about them. And that's why we're here today. At this event, we seek to expand this concept of maritime in the maritime environment and initiate proactive strategic thought on these issues. Presently, over 40% of the world's population lives within 100 kilometers of the coast, where human security issues merge with influence and are influenced by the maritime domain. Human security is both enabled and made vulnerable through the resources available in local waters and the associated range of activities. From fishing and tourism to piracy, recovery and exploitation of cultural artifacts and illegal trafficking. Others use the available sea lanes as a path to migrate, the oldest form of adapting to a change in climate or to escape the ravages of conflict, famine or persecution. These are rational, often desperate actions by those who do not have their individual human security needs met. State and non-state actors also exploit the maritime domain and resources. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing decimates the global commons as well as local economies. Modern slavery, illicit trafficking and piracy continue to thrive in the maritime environment, confined not only to the latorals of local nations, but extending out into and across the world's oceans. Around the world, human security challenges are expanding and intensifying in the maritime domain. No Navy or sea service will be able to ignore the effects of spreading human insecurity. We have set up five panels to examine these topics. We will cover human security in the maritime environment in coastal zones, criminal activities and illegal unreported and unregulated fishing on the first day. Tomorrow we'll return to address unsafe mixed migration and modern slavery and the protection of cultural heritage. Within each topic, we ask our panel to address a series of questions. One, what is the human security issue? What does it mean for the maritime strategic environment? Next, what does it mean for navies and coast guards? And finally, what are our operational policy and force options? We are so glad to have such a large audience joining us and interested in exploring these issues collaboratively. We have people from 30 different countries, which is wonderful, because the key purpose of this event is that we learn from each other. The majority of the event is being recorded and will be available on the Naval War College YouTube page after the two-day event has concluded. Now to start us off. I'd like to introduce our own warrior scholar leader, Rear Admiral Shoshana Chatfield. Commissioned through NROTC, she has a long career as a Navy helicopter pilot with command tours ranging from the squadron to most recently as joint region Marianas. She was awarded the Navy's political military scholarship and received a master of public administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She also earned a doctor of education and leadership studies from the University of San Diego. She is currently serving as our president at the US Naval War College. We look forward to hearing Rear Admiral Chatfield's opening remarks. Hello, I'm Rear Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, the 57th president of the United States Naval War College. I'd like to welcome you to the Human Security in the Maritime Environment Conference. I am honored and excited to kick off this event. It's a very important topic, but I'd like to first make a few very special welcomes. I'd like to welcome our keynote speaker today, Rear Admiral James Jim Aiken. He's a US Naval War College alumni. He is the commander of US Naval Forces Southern Command, Commander US Fourth Fleet. Tomorrow's keynote speaker, Ms. Michelle Struck, a principal director of stability and humanitarian affairs, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. And Rear Admiral Stefano Russo from the Italian Navy, the commander of Standing NATO Maritime Group 2, SNMG 2. And Rear Admiral Scott Klendenen, US Coast Guard, also a US Naval War College alumni. He's the US Coast Guard assistance commandant for response policy. I'd like to also warmly welcome our active and retired flag officers who may be viewing our gracious and engaged Naval War College foundation members, our connected alumni, all of our partners in academia, our faculty, and of course, our students. Thank you. Of course, this conference could not be given without the support of the Jerome E. Levy chair of Economic Geography and National Security, Professor Chris Gisbarro. Thank you for your continued support to this research study. Your contribution makes this discussion possible. Thank you so much. And also to our events, our audio visual public affairs and graphics teams that always make these conferences a success. Thank you. And now a special warm welcome and thank you to Commander Andrea Cameron and Professor Chris Gisbarro for your committed work in this important Naval War College study and your success in coordinating this event. So to all, welcome to this talk, this conference on human security in the maritime environment. This conference will include deep discussions on human insecurity in the maritime environment and coastal zones, criminal activities, illegal unreported and unregulated IUU fishing, unsafe mixed migration and modern slavery, and protection of cultural heritage. I'm here today to kick off this very important conference because of the dedication and work the faculty members of the Naval War College Climate and Human Security Studies Group and the students from our Climate Change and National Security Elective have been doing to better understand climate and human security concerns and the impacts to our national security. Our role here at the Naval War College is to inform today's decision makers and educate tomorrow's leaders. In today's dynamic security environment, numerical and technological superiority are no longer enough. We need to outthink our adversaries. At the Naval War College, we deepen the intellectual engagement of Naval Joint Interagency and International Leaders to achieve that cognitive advantage. Our objective here in Newport and at multiple sites around the globe is to deliver excellence in education, research and outreach and to build enduring relationships with our alumni and partners. The Naval War College is committed not only to conducting research, simulations and academic coursework in the field of changing climates, but when appropriate. We also want to be a leading voice within the Department of Defense and among international militaries in working to improve our abilities to better understand these changes. The Naval War College Climate and Human Security Study is a small slice of our academic disciplines, but an important area of study that educates our joint force, interagency and international partners all over the world. Our professional military education prioritizes ethical leadership across our curriculum and therefore the Naval War College sees the value in Climate and Human Security Studies Group and our climate focused electives. They are in great demand, as is our human security in the Maritime Environment Conference, which attracts top scholars in the field. My challenge to all of you today is to think outside of your own area of specialty. Listen, think critically about these important topics and provide feedback please to one another to make our discussions as meaningful as possible as we drive toward a better understanding of these human security issues in the Maritime Environment. Thank you and have a productive and successful discussion. I would like to now introduce the Commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Southern Command and Commander of the U.S. Fourth Fleet, Rear Admiral James Jim Aiken. A surface warfare officer, Rear Admiral Aiken, has served on and commanded many U.S. ships, including his leadership as Commander of Carrier Strike Group II, the USS John F. Kennedy Strike Group. He was also the Deputy Executive Assistant Administrative Aid to the Secretary of the Navy, a liaison to the U.S. Senate for the Secretary of Defense and Naval Aid and Executive Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Financial Management and Comptroller. Most recently, he was the Deputy Director, Resources and Acquisition for the Joint Staff J-8. We particularly would like to highlight that Rear Admiral Aiken is an alumni of our own Naval War College and welcome him back. We're honored to have Rear Admiral Aiken join us today to talk about the importance of human security in the maritime environment. Please join me in welcoming Rear Admiral Jim Aiken. Good morning. It is an honor to be here today with you all, albeit virtual, to discuss this important topic that so many of our nations and navies focus on each and every day. These gatherings, these collaborations with Bring Us Together will continue to strengthen our bonds and allow us to further discuss and navigate the challenges we continue to face. I am humbled by this opportunity to participate with so many who have dedicated their adult lives, their adult lives to this field pursuing innovative solutions, ideas, and discourses. I hope to add some of my own insights from my own life at sea. I have served in Europe observing firsthand the mass migrations from Africa to Europe and sadly some who did not make it. I have served in the Caribbean during the Haitian migrations and observed the US Coast Guard and the US Navy saving thousands, if not tens of thousands of lives. I have been part of Task Force combating piracy and drug trafficking in the Atlantic and the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Indian oceans and very dear, near and dear to my own family, my mother-in-law currently serves helping human trafficking victims and my oldest daughter who is currently in college hopes to one day be an advocate to someday stop the slave trade. Our naval forces, the Coast Guard, the Navy, the Coastal Patrol are one of the major enablers of maritime security. 90% of all trade and 95% of all digital information flow in and on the seas. And over the past 25 years, global waterways have become more congested and maritime traffic has increased by a magnitude of four. With this increase, it exposes additional challenges and issues such as terrorism, piracy, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, human trafficking, counter illicit drug trafficking and migration. Through our shared values, values such as democracy, human life, conservation, the importance of food and water and interactions, we can make an impact ensuring the security, the health, the safety and the prosperity of everyone. We must not allow behavior that undermines the legitimacy of free and open seas. It is contrary to what we stand for, the rule of law, the freedom of navigation and the freedom of the seas. Working together and through our partner interactions, we can promote acceptance of what should become customary practices to governing the laws of the sea. Chief of Naval Operations, Mike Gilday, recently said, mutual respect for our international law binds us together. It enables all nations, regardless of the length of their coastline to prosper. The scope and scale of human activities on the seas today demands that we keep our sea lanes open. Our global economy floats on seawater and we are called to protect the rules-based order and keep the seas open and free. We have to act together. A team of like-minded nations with our government and partner security forces, we must embrace trust. Trust is foundational. Stephen Covey says, as trust increases, speed and cost decreases and vice versa. In our relationships, in our partnerships, speed and trust are paramount. We need to take that first step, that first step of trust and vulnerability. Over the years, I have learned that information sharing is critical in everyday life, especially in my life at sea. I believe that there are five key items in ensuring our common interests and goals are met and rely on the foundation of information exchange. The five are as follows. We have to gather the information. We have to collect it. We have to find sources in ways to collect that information. Secondly, we have to share that information. Who are we sharing it with? How timely is the information that we're sharing? Third and a very important step is as the information has to be receded. If no one is receiving the information, there is no value added. Fourth, of course, we have to distribute the information. Who is getting the information? Where is it going? Is it going to the correct people? And finally, we have to apply that information. What are we gonna go and do with this information? What action are we going to take? Knowledge is clearly powered. Shared knowledge is pure power. Shared knowledge that is acted upon can really, really be powerful. We have the opportunity to share information. You may have seen in the news recently that there was an Ecuadorian tallship that actually captured a drug runner just in the last few days. I'd like to share with you the rest of the story and it's a great illustration of information sharing. There was a U.S. air asset that was flying and noticed a drug runner heading north towards North America. The proper procedures, they called back to the command headquarters, passed the information that the command headquarters then tried to find someone who could respond and check with partner nations, task force, all those types of things and worked through the different nations. We worked with Ecuador. Ecuador said, hey, it may not be an exact fit but we have the tallship in that area. We can send the tallship over to investigate. The tallship was able to go over and investigate and was able to find that the ship that was heading north towards North America was actually carrying drugs and today we have one last drug runner on the seats. That's a great example and a great display of information sharing. We need to depend on each other and share information on our common goals and interests that impact the maritime domain. For example, IUU fishing. IUU fishing creates instability in the maritime domain. It jeopardizes food access and the livelihood of people from coastal nations. IUU fishing undermines international agreements, maritime law and creates a disadvantage for legitimate fishing industries. At US 4th Fleet, we are using information technology platforms that permit us to do data analytics to identify major trends and threats. We share this information with our multinational partners in an effort to destabilize this activity and promote domain awareness among our partner nations. Transparency and trust are key information in this information sharing environment. We must take steps to improve our collaboration and protect the global security of our waters. IUU fishing is just as insidious as transnational criminal organization activity. It takes food from our families. It drives out legitimate family-owned fishing business and depletes our oceans. Illegal fishing can be linked to these transnational organizations as well. Recently, you may have, I want to share one story. The US was doing some monitoring some illegal fishing in the Caribbean. In the process of monitoring the illegal fishing, they came across a boat that they thought was doing illegal fishing and then the next thing they found out, they were part of an illegal drug scheme as well. So you can see that there's a clear tie between these fishing operations and some transnational criminal organizations. Fishing operations are oftentimes used as covers to commit crimes. Workers on IUU vessels are often subject to inhumane working conditions, long days, and little pay. Together with our partners, we can ensure that we are ready to tackle these challenges and tough conditions, ensuring the security and the stability of the region is maintained. We need to maintain and even expand our large network and diverse allies and partners. Safe and Secure Seas originates with safe and secure international orders and starts with cooperation, trust, shared values among each of us. Acting in a unity of effort, like-minded nations generate enormous power to modify the behavior in the maritime domain. The shared knowledge then becomes, then begins to move from the maritime, from maritime domain awareness to maritime domain control. Partners and allies must be ready and willing to bring capability and capacity to operations across the continuum. We need to take advantage of every asset and every piece of information we have and utilize it the best that we can every day. I realize we have limited resources and the migration from maritime domain awareness to maritime domain control can be costly. We must be strategic and are using our assets, prioritizing zones and areas and addressing specific illegal activity. Transitioning now, how do we best share information? One of the tools we are using at Forth Fleet is called CENTRICS, the Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System. This is a communication tool for planners and operators. It allows for secure information to flow between nations. It can be one-on-one or with many in a large group. We use this method routinely for exercises, such as Unitas, our largest maritime exercise. Our goal though is not just to share information during exercises, but to share information every day. CENTRICS and other mediums, as well as conferences like this, provide us a great mechanism to share information. With that comes the notion that no problem is too small. We have to not only recognize the large challenges we have, but we also have to get after the small as well. Together we can strengthen our bonds and be ready to respond to any and all challenges that we have. Every day, the naval service deploys and sustains ready forces around the world. Now, why? Why? Because we are committed to maintaining our relationships, growing connections and strengthening our ties with our partners because of our shared values, values like life, humanity, food and water. As Simon Sinek suggests through research, once we address the why, the purpose, the very reason we exist, we will be able to move forward with the what and the how. Through our continued engagement, we will continue to seek opportunities to collaborate with other nations, overcome challenges and preserve free and open international seas. I am hopeful this conference will strengthen and shed light on our why. Thank you again for this opportunity and I look forward to our discussion over the next few days. Hello, I'd like to express my deep thanks to Rear Admiral Aikin for sharing his thoughts today and leading us into the key themes of the conference. He described the global maritime domain, the importance of information sharing and the variety of human security topics we'll be discussing over the next two days. Most importantly, he talked about the speed and trust of our partnerships and relationships. This conference asks us to look at the intersecting strategic implications and the interconnections between navies and the human insecurity in the maritime domain. As a reminder, all conference materials can be downloaded from the bottom of the Naval War College events page and in it you'll find the agenda and the full biographies of all of our participants. The event is being recorded and the majority of it will be available on the Naval War College YouTube page after the event. Now I'd like to introduce our first panel in moderator. To follow up on Rear Admiral Aikin's keynote message, we launched straight into a discussion on human insecurity in the maritime environment and coastal zones. The moderator of our first panel is Captain Josh Fagan, a key member of our team who helped us organize this event today. Captain Josh Fagan graduated from the US Air Force Academy in 1999, earned an MS in aeronautics from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and an MA in national security and strategic studies from the US Naval War College. Josh is a Navy helicopter pilot and has served as commanding officer of Helicopter Sea Combat Weapons School Pacific as helicopter mission lead on combat detachments ashore in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom as an exercise lead for US Cyber Command and most recently as the Air Operations Officer for Carrier Strike Group Five. We are honored to have Captain Fagan on the faculty at the Naval War College and that he is moderating our first panel today. Captain Fagan, welcome. Thank you, Andrew. Good morning, everybody. I'm Captain Josh Fagan, military professor in the strategy and policy department with the US Naval War College. The first panel today is on human insecurity in the coastal zones. It focuses on how the economic, health, environmental and physical security of populations living in the coastal zones or operating in the maritime environment can influence and potentially trigger broader national security challenges and regional or global conflicts. We'll also look at what the governments, maritime services, coast guards and navies of the world might do to prepare for or prevent such conflicts. Before I introduce our speakers, some admin. First, all comments reflect the positions of the speakers and attendees and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the US Naval War College, the Department of the Navy or the US government. Please keep your microphones muted and cameras off. Please post all questions and comments in the chat for the question and answer period after the presentations. We have limited time, so the earlier you post your question in the chat, more likely we'll be able to feel it. The full biographies for all of our speakers are available in the conference program. Now let's begin the discussion. This panel has three distinguished speakers. And first I'd like to introduce Dr. Sophia Galani. Dr. Galani's research focuses on maritime security, the law of the sea, human rights and terrorism. She's the author of Hossages and Human Rights towards a victim-centered approach and a co-editor of Maritime Security and the Law of the Sea, Helper-Hindricks. She helped develop the UN's manual on maritime crime and is one of the authors of the Geneva Declaration of Human Rights at sea. Since 2015, she has served as an editor with the European Human Rights Law Review. Welcome, Dr. Galani. Over to you. Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for this very kind invitation. I'm really happy and honored to be with you today in order to discuss this very important issues. I have been asked to set the same for discussion of this panel. So I thought that we ought to start the discussion with some conceptual and definitional issues. So I think that it's important to understand what human security means, what human security means in the maritime domain and what the relationship of human security and maritime security is. So if we go back to the basics and as Commander Cameron has already mentioned, for a number of years, we thought of security only as a national security issue. So what we had in mind was the protection of territorial integrity from external aggression or the protection of national security interests. Or we used to talk about global security and what we had in mind was, for example, the threat of a nuclear war. During the nineties, this changed and the UN Human Development Program played a significant role by publishing a report on human security. And the report essentially invited us to consider, to distinguish security as an issue that concerned the state and as an issue that concerned the individual. And in that very fast effort to understand human security, what we see is that there is a collection of opinions from people from around the world. And the question was, how these people perceive and understand human security. And what we see there is that different people coming from different countries. I understood human security very differently and they cited threats that might have had to do with natural disasters, diseases, poverty, or even political repression and gender violence. This means that it is very, very difficult to define human security. And there have been efforts in different documents and strategies and in the literature to define human security, but there is no agreed definition. And this is not unusual. This is what we also see when it comes to maritime security. And we all know now that maritime security means different things to different people across time and space. And the same happens with human security, which means very different things to different people. So the question is, how do we understand human security? And again, what we see is that it's extremely difficult to list all the threats that might affect people. It's very difficult to categorize them. So what we have done is that we treat human security as an umbrella concept. And under these concepts, many different forms of security can fade in. So for example, we talk about human security and we have in mind threats that might affect economic security, environmental security, food security, health security, community security, and so on and so forth. Over the years, the term human security has been used a lot by human rights lawyers. And when we discuss the protection of life and the protection of dignity, we do have in mind human security. So very often we might talk about the protection of the right to life or the protection of the right to dignity. And we do actually talk about human security. But what does it mean when it comes to the maritime domain? As I said, the use of the term has grown over the years and I do think that it has acquired maritime dimensions. And what I've seen in the literature in my research is that human security in the maritime domain has essentially two different aspects, a collective one and an individual one. So when we talk about the collective aspect of human security at sea, what we have in mind is the economic and environmental interests of coastal communities. And the risks posed to these communities by various illegal activities at sea and this might be legal fishing, environmental crimes or even piracy. And again, here it's very difficult to identify all the threats. So again, we have a sort of a matrix of different types of security that come under the umbrella concept of human security. So again, we talk about threats to economic security, environmental security or food security. And I think the other speakers will talk about this issue in more detail. What we mean by individual human security at sea is what has to do with the protection of seafarers from abuses on board vessels. And in the literature, we see the emphasis on seafarers, very obvious reasons. They are at sea for very long periods of time. They work at sea and they live at sea. So it's very important to implement strict labor and human rights standards in order to protect their human security. This is also the view of a judge, Korean Sakete Shasari, who's a judge of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea and has written about individual human security at sea. And he also talks about the protection of seafarers. And I think that this view reflects the approach of ITLUS. And this has to do with the fact that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea doesn't really help us with the protection of human security or the rights of persons. It doesn't hate anything about human security. It doesn't say much about the protection of the rights of persons. So ITLUS has tried to plug this gap by essentially interpreting some of the provisions about prompt release of cruise, for example, or the conditions of detention of cruise by interpreting them in a way that allows for some protection of rights, some protection of human security. Now, ITLUS is helpful though, when it comes to how we can implement human security in the different coastal zones. And what we see is that it's much easier to enforce some measures and implement policies that have to do with human security when we're closer to the coast within the territorial waters, for example, or even the Kandige zone, which is often used as a security zone. But the further away we go from the costs, when we go to the exclusive economic zone or even to the high seas, then we see that then the powers of states are much more limited. And this is in these zones is usually where crimes such as illegal fishing or human trafficking or piracy takes place. Now, I think I don't have much time left, but I wanted to make two last points that I think that are very important. And these have to do with the relationship between human security and maritime security. As I said earlier, maritime security does not have a clear definition or to be specific, it does not have an agreed definition. So it means different things to different people and navies around the world understand maritime security differently. Human security is part of maritime security. And again, if we think about this matrix of maritime security, we see that human security is an essential part of maritime security. We need to have people for safe. It doesn't matter whether they live near the coast, it doesn't mean whether they work at sea or operate at sea. We do need to consider human security when we adopt and implement policies that are aimed at enhancing maritime security. The other thing that is very important to bear in mind is that human security at sea is closely interrelated with human security on lands. We cannot achieve human security at sea unless we achieve human security on lands. And we've seen in many occasions that there are problems that are manifested at sea such as piracy, for example, but originate from lands. So for example, when we had the problem of Somali piracy, we had pirate attacks at sea because we had many problems on lands such as corruption, ineffective government, unemployment, poverty, and so on and so forth. So I'd say that human security at sea and human security on land have almost a symbiotic relationship. And we need to achieve both of them in order to be able to achieve and realize maritime security. I think I have run out of time, so I should stop here and give some time to the other speakers. Thank you, doctor. Up next, I'd like to introduce Dr. Curtis Bell. Dr. Bell is an associate professor of maritime security and governance in the International Programs Department at the U.S. Naval War College. Before joining the war college, he created and directed Stable Seas, a non-governmental research program that specialized in multilateral cooperation at sea and the maritime activities of terrorists and violent extremists. Thank you for coming, Dr. Bell. Over to you. Great, can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, perfect. Well, thank you so much for that introduction and I'd like to thank the organizers for including me on such an interesting set of panels. I'm really looking forward to the next two days together. So as we've already heard from the earlier speakers, human security at sea is a massive, almost impossible topic. It is about as expansive as it gets. It is transnational by nature. Threats to human security rarely fall under the mandates of any single military or civilian authority. These threats demand a deep understanding of overlapping legal jurisdictions, domestic laws and international agreements. And to complicate matters further, maritime human security challenges have root causes found on shore in economically or politically marginalized coastal communities. Too often we fail to address these root causes of human security issues at sea because we neglect the physical and economic insecurity of affected women, children and stateless or otherwise marginalized people. So it's all very complicated and there's always more to learn. So where can we start on such an overwhelming topic? I've been asked to speak on the inclusion of human security in maritime security strategy. And my first thought was that this is the kind of topic that can derail maritime strategies because strategy documents really like to focus on a limited number of objectives with clear lines of effort attached to those objectives. How can we begin to include something that is so expansive and complicated? To be honest, I was struggling to answer that question this week while preparing my remarks for the panel. I was sitting here in my office in loose hall at the US Naval War College, which is a historic building that houses, among other things, the college's international programs department. I was working at my desk and a small campus tour group walked by and paused just outside my door. This isn't uncommon. It's a nice building. We have halls of flags and plaques and gifts from students from all over the world. Everyone likes to bring visitors through. But what happened on this specific tour was pretty different, at least in my experience here. One of the guests remarked pretty loudly that they didn't understand why any institution called the US Naval War College would use this building this way. Shouldn't the entire focus of the institution be on preparing American naval officers for wars against other countries? Isn't this why it is called the US Naval War College? Why train officers from other military services? Why include students from other countries? Why spend time on other topics that are not major wars against rival or near pure powers? Why do things like this event today? So the guest was, in effect, wondering whether there's any room for human security in maritime strategy. Don't we have bigger, more pressing problems is the implication. So at this point, I did what most of us would do in the situation. I turned my volume down on my headphones all the way and I strained to here so that I could see where this might go. I think these are fair questions. And if this guest is correct, then maybe our human security focus is misplaced. After all, we're less than a year out from the publication of the United States Tri-Service Strategy on Integrated All-Domain Naval Power, which is named Advantage at Sea. It makes perfectly clear the priorities for the US Navy Marine Corps and Coast Guard. China or Chinese appear in the document 35 times. Russia or Russian are there 16 times. Maritime safety is included once. Fishing is mentioned once. Piracy three times. Commerce five times. Human rights are not mentioned. Human trafficking is mentioned once in a laundry list of secondary concerns. Other words like migration, refugees, asylum seekers, sex trafficking, slavery, none of these are mentioned at all. In this version of American maritime strategy, the topics that we call human security are ultimately achieved by stalling the growing influence of revisionist rivals like Russia and China. The thought is that when a rules-based order is secured by American naval primacy, like-minded countries, similarly committed to global peace and prosperity can work together to address human security at sea. But if revisionist rivals are allowed to break down this order, then efforts to address human security will struggle and the world will become a much more dangerous place for those who live and work on or near the sea. In this way, human security threats are consequences or symptoms of the primary task at hand, the main event of deterring revisionist rivals rather than challenges worthy of our primary focus and of themselves. Sea control first, human security sometime later. Now, I wanna be fair to the guest tour that I mentioned. This person may not have been articulating that perspective as strongly as the American tri-service strategy does. I didn't hear the entire conversation, but the comments are indicative of the widely held perspective that as maritime rivals rise, American maritime strategy must narrow its focus. It's an understandable temptation to focus on rivals right now. But this risks marginalizing the human security topics we will discuss over the next two days. They take the form of tasks secondary to the suppression of rising powers that might antagonize a rules-based international order. So I wanna use the remainder of my time to mount a defense for why we need to study, consider, emphasize and address these human security threats right now. These topics warrant a place at the center of maritime strategy. I believe this to be the case for three reasons. First, threats to human security at sea are not problems that are born from the presence of revisionist rivals who challenge American sea control. Reducing the influence of malign states will not necessarily change the problems we are here to address. Many of these problems are features of our global economic system rather than bugs. They require recognition as such and they require deliberate and immediate action. For example, there's no ending piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and the danger to seafarers and fishers working there without ending the environmental and ecological carnage being done there. Oil pollution, overfishing, exported electronics waste and the corruption that surrounds extractive economies are all drivers of illicit criminal activity at sea. When these kinds of problems go unchecked, they result in a loss of sea control. They spread frustration among individuals looking to provide for their families and among governments looking for solutions for problems that are widely perceived often fairly to be exported to them by foreign governments. These human security problems send folks who might be fishing and trading into smuggling or piracy. These problems can cause governments to lose faith in our rules-based international order and instead drive them to look for financing and faster action from alternative sources. We need to recognize that human security at sea is not something that happens when revisionist powers undermine a rules-based order. We need to embrace that some of these problems are endemic to that order and sometimes the loudest champions of a rules-based order are among the biggest culprits when it comes to exporting human security problems overseas. We cannot craft maritime strategies without looking inward at how we can better address human security now. We cannot blame the problems on others and imagine that marginalizing state rivals will necessarily improve human security at sea down the line. My second point is that though the United States may not enjoy the primacy it did a few decades ago, conflict with aspirational peers like Russia and China is far from inevitable. Institutions like the Naval War College need to teach strategic thinking in times of war but substantial strategy may also be needed to avoid war in the first place. We have opportunities to engage with Russia, China and others around shared problems like piracy, seafarer safety, climate change, humanitarian assistance and disaster response, port and vessel control, climate change, the maritime global supply chain, et cetera. Strategic interests will not always align. This may sound naive given the overwhelming emphasis of late on military competition and hostile rhetoric rather than security cooperation but we do have many examples to draw from. Cooperation with China around counter piracy off the coast of Somalia is one example. Creative strategists will see what is plainly obvious. Human security topics offer opportunities for cooperation that could de-escalate tensions with revisionist rivals and create greater opportunities for constructive communication. In this way, maritime strategies that give attention to human security will not distract from the primary objectives rather including human security and our focus may be necessary to broaden the toolkit so that we can achieve the dominant goals of countering the influence of revisionist rivals. And finally, whether we're cooperating with rivals or cooperating with third parties aligned against them no state including the United States can do this alone. We really must cooperate. Whether the primary aim of maritime strategy is to address human security or address revisionist rivals partnerships with allies will be key and that makes strengthening naval partnerships critical regardless of the specific strategic objectives. I've been very fortunate in my work to travel to dozens of countries and speak to naval leaders of well over 50 countries. I see deep interest in the topics we're discussing today. I believe the rules-based international order will be most effectively defended if the countries advocating for it have deep ties forged around collective action around our shared interests. This means starting with overfishing and economic welfare in coastal communities. It means protecting the lives of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. It means protecting seafarers who work in the global maritime supply chain as well as the slaves and exploited workers who catch fish for global export markets. The truth is many navies around the world have been focused on human security for a very long time. The United States maritime strategy will only be strengthened by listening to these navies priorities and building partnerships around them. So thank you once again for your time and attention. I hope these comments which again are my own personal views and do not represent the views of the US government or the Naval War College have helped make the case for including human security topics in maritime security strategy formation. Many of the threats to human security we'll discuss over the next couple of days are only becoming more significant and crafting inadequate responses only going to get more difficult the longer we wait. Thank you. Thank you, doctor. For our final speaker on our panel this morning, I'd like to introduce Dr. Christopher LaMonica. Dr. LaMonica is a professor of government at the US Coast Guard Academy specializing in African area studies. Prior to entering academia, Chris worked for 10 years in ocean freight shipping working with the intergovernmental organization for economic cooperation and development along with USAID and Zambia. At the Coast Guard Academy he supervises cadet research on coastal governance and port security issues in sub-Saharan Africa. His latest co-edited book is titled Horror and Paradise frameworks for understanding the crises of the Niger Delta of Nigeria. He is now working on a co-edited book addressing COVID-19 and human security in Africa. Thank you, Dr. LaMonica. Over to you. Thank you. Thank you all who have coordinated this conference and thank you for including the US Coast Guard Academy in this dialogue. Shout out to Chris Jess Barrow specifically. Thank you. As we've already heard, this is a very broad topic. The term human security is not clear. Everyone has a different understanding of it and it's very much like many other terms like post-modern in that different people have different understandings of it. I think we could all agree though just from where we've already been this morning that human security concerns lie outside of the frameworks of traditional security. And I think we've all seen this, if we're honest about it, and I think we would all like to have a frank discussion about this, but when we travel, when we're representing Navy Coast Guard other security-oriented organizations, we have very little communication with local communities where the realities of human security exist. So we, I guess my view, who are immersed in traditional security settings can be different. And I guess that's what I tried to bring to my cadets as we talk about Coast Guard engagement with coastal authorities, coastal communities, to move away from specifically, and I'll talk more about it, central government authority with central government authority. Because of course, that's the way that our engagement in security dialogue has taken place for so many decades. And I think there's a gradual recognition for those who work in security that destitution, complete misery, loss of hopelessness is something that can be a national security concern for the United States. This, if you watch for it, enters into official documents. I mean, one of the things that we use in the classroom when talking about security are the presidential US national security plans. I mean, so, you know, they're criticized for being rhetoric, but the first time I saw reference to immiseration, destitution being a US national security was in 2004. And I believe that was the Bush administration's statement on security, national security. And it has continued, but it is a very, you have to watch for it. And as Dr. Bell was saying, it's, the focus is on broader things. It's the kind of wording that you have to watch for. So, yes, I teach at the Coast Guard Academy and I have the honor, I have the privilege of coordinating advanced research projects, first class cadets, and it's funded by the Maritime Branch, J5 at AFRICOM. I've been doing it for 12 years now. And initially we fell into a pattern, which is you, as I was discussing, you travel to, let's say, a Maritime Security-themed conference. I've done this with the International Programs Office, actually, in Gabon and Ghana, other places. And you fall into a pattern of staying in secure, fancy hotels, and you go to the conference venue, and you might travel by bus together. You know, you kind of see local realities from the bus window, but then you're, you know, you're whisked back to the hotel. And before you know it, you're in the airport and you're home. And the focus is, of course, on leadership, and that does matter. But the majority of us security folks have little engagement with human security on the ground. My own research has funded, focused on the urgent need for paying closer attention to local and coastal governance. For decades now, I've joined scholars like Alex and Sabina Lautensack. They are the founders of the Journal of Human Security. And they have addressed, you know, works with other scholars who focus on other things, like the environment or the various categories of influences on human security. My focus has been on an opportunity that I think was squandered in the post-Cold War era, where we had been focusing almost exclusively on central government authorities, and there was an opportunity to pay closer attention to local government authorities and local communities. And instead, the pattern of continuing to engage with only central government authorities has continued. So, another shout out to a scholar is Robert Bates. Robert Bates is an Africanist. I had him as a professor. He wrote a book called Prosperity and Violence. And although he's an Africanist, he does something unusual in this book where he actually looks at the history of European development and the role of security in that development. And his argument is that security was allowed to occur, development was allowed to occur, sorry, because of local security, because of functioning local governments. And most are leery to make those kinds of parallels between, let's say, Western history experience and experience in other parts of the world. And I applaud him. I think security is clearly needed to prosper and we need to pay closer attention to the functioning of local governance. Today, I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration that local government function is virtually non-existent. Local government authorities pledge allegiance, if you will, to the central. And when I was writing my dissertation in the late 1990s, I could say that 70% of the sub-Saharan African population was living in rural areas. Today, that's no longer the case. It's the reverse. 70% of population are now urban. So there's been dramatic demographic changes and limited with time, I'll just say that the central government offers perverse incentives to stay in power. So it's not really in their interest to promote, you know, the empowerment of local government authorities. When it comes to coastal communities, you have this phenomenon of subsidies being provided to fishermen in return. And it's well understood by the fishermen for their votes. You know, no subsidies, no votes is what they protest in the streets. Well, what that of course does is encourage more fishing. That's why it's referred to as a perverse incentive. And I've taken cadets to see this, you know, you have to get out of the hotel and take them to the ports. That's how we've sort of gone. We've transformed it doing that more and more and speaking with people working with NGOs who guide us to see these kinds of things. And you see, you know, of course smaller and smaller fish being brought in illegally. You see increased desperation using all kinds of illegal methods, you know, fine mesh, which everyone knows is illegal, the use of chemicals, you know, stunning fish, night fishing with the lights, all very illegal. And so I try to bring my cadets to see that kind of thing. And what you have over time is the collapse of fish stocks, the collapse of the local means to just make a living and the incentive to just move to where there's some hope, which is the central, you know, city urban centers. Quickly, I'll mention three cases that, you know, give me some hope. The Coast Guard is a little bit more local focused if you look through the missions of the Coast Guard. The one case that I've spent the most time on is the Liberian Coast Guard. And each one of these cases is different, but the Liberian Coast Guard is an odd example in that the central government authority reached out to the United States, and this is the former president, Helen Johnson Sirleaf, to establish a Liberian Coast Guard. And so since 2007, we have had a Coast Guard, US Coast Guard liaison attempting to facilitate the establishment of a Coast Guard. And I have to thank the Naval War College again, CWAG, for providing a grant to write a case study on its progress about 2012. And long story short, it's very tough going. You've got a culture of land-based security, you know, the Army specifically, taking over that role with very little appreciation of the maritime domain, how it might be of benefit to patrol in any form or fashion. There's very little understanding of that. So that's a whole endeavor. I'll just say, you know, I'm happy to discuss it, but in the interest of moving forward, I'll say another case is that of the Nigerian Coast Guard. And that I think is a little bit more typical of what we might see in the future. We're not gonna really have too many central government authorities coming to the United States or external powers to facilitate a local Coast Guard. No, instead, we've been trying to convince them of their need for a Coast Guard. And it's viewed by the central government authorities as a threat to government resources. Periodically, you know, I will see news of a bill presented in Parliament to establish a new Nigerian Coast Guard. You know, I've got articles here in front of me that talk about the status of affairs. This is something that I've discussed with J5 folks, AFRICOM, and the only thing, it's been an awkward relationship from the get-go with US, with Nigeria. And I think the thing that they have essentially allowed us to do is to provide trainings, MLE trainings. And so that's kind of where it is at the moment. The last case is the Kenyan Coast Guard. And this is early engagement for us. I mean, it's right now happening where we have a new Coast Guard liaison who is just getting started. But again, Dr. Bell is right where the focus of, well, the direction from DOD to AFRICOM is not about the maritime domain. It's about, and it's gone through iterations, but right now, at least for the past couple of years, it's been on the great power rivalry in those places where human security matters the most. In those places where the HSI, the Human Security Index, has the worst data. So really what you have now is another lost opportunity. China is very engaged. We all have ideas about their methods and what they're up to. We tend to criticize their openness to corruption, but I think we have to be honest about the fact that much of the funding for corruption has come from the outside. And we have been part of the outside. So we have allowed, you know, illiberal governments, unfree governments, authoritarian governments to function very well. And it's time for us to pay closer attention to the activities of the oil industry that have polluted the local environment, that have made things so difficult for local communities. I think some of the answers, I'd like to think some of the answers are not only in focusing on local government, but also CSR, and I try to have students think about that. Sorry, corporate social responsibility. The idea of having, many of our students are gonna end up in business and they'll be on boards and hopefully they'll have a heightened sensitivity to doing the right thing, not just getting the oil, but actually doing it in a responsible fashion. So national security priorities for the United States are not tied to local human security realities. I guess that's how I see things at the moment. And perhaps I'm looking at the clock, perhaps I should stop there and perhaps we can open it up to discussion. Thank you, doctor. Thank you to all of our speakers today for your very insightful presentations. I invite now all of our speakers on the panel to go camera on and speakers on for our question and answer period. For everyone else watching, if you haven't already done so, you can start posting your questions in the chat box. If we don't have time to get to it now, we'll see how we can best follow up afterwards. But I'll start with one general question from the audience. It comes in a couple of parts. So I'd like to see if we can get an answer from all the speakers, I'm gonna make neck down into a Dr. Bell's review. Looking to see if you could highlight or explain better the linkage between human security and national security or really national defense and then kind of talk about how the military plays a role in that and how the whole of government plays a role in that linkage between human security and national defense. And then the more specific question is when it comes to the Naval service, what are the different ways we can support augmenting human security concerns without taking away from our primary roles in the Navy of our supporting national defense? Over to you. Thank you. I'm happy to jump in. Am I heard here? Yeah, I am heard. Just I think what we need to start thinking about is that national defense has been largely a state to state dialogue. And we need to think beyond that state to state dialogue. And it's gonna be hard to do because it's a firmly established norm. Diplomats do this, right? They engage with state government leaders and we all engage with state government leader, have cadets speaking with Navy admirals in Ghana like in a second in Harpy because they consider a central government authorities. And we need to figure out ways to have, I mean, I think of it in terms of youth. Youth, our students need to understand that there is that separation historically and that they have to think beyond that separation. Ultimately, will the threats come from misery in these coastal communities? And I guess one of the things I'm amazed by is that there isn't violence. Marx was wrong. We were waiting for violence to come from the bottom, I guess you could say. So so far, things are pretty stable. And is it gonna take violence? Is it gonna take uprisings for us to make it part of our US national security concerns? I think it's already happened. I think that has happened. And we have different approaches, using anthropologists and other kinds of things, but we still have a long way to go. Oh, please, after you. Thank you. I just wanted to say that security is something that we understand because of the absence of threats. And this usually means, especially when it comes to human security, that we need to prevent these threats. So usually security requires prevention, while defense requires preparation for an attack or an imminent attack. With reference to human security, I should have said that there are four specific characteristics that we have to bear in mind that makes human security and security in general different to defense. The first one is that security usually is of universal concern. And there are different threats and the intensity of these threats might differ, but security usually is, human security is usually of universal concern. The other characteristic of human security is that it is interdependent. In order to achieve human security, you require the involvement of all states. You need states to cooperate. So it's not something that states can do on their own by defending themselves or by coming together in blocks of states with the same ideology, such as NATO, for example. The other characteristic, as I said, is prevention. And the final characteristic is that in order to achieve human security, you need people-centered approaches, which is not necessarily what you might need in order to achieve defense. So the terms in the sense that concepts are different, and this is why we take different approaches to achieve them. So in order to achieve human security, as I said, it requires a lot of prevention and cooperation among states. And we heard earlier about the importance, for example, of information sharing. What we need to realize is that human security, as I said, see most of the times, is threatened by non-state actors. So you don't really have to fight with other states, or try to show your power over other states. You need to come together and usually fight against non-state actors. And most of the times, even what we call invisible enemies. So I think this is what maybes need to realize and strategists needs to realize that the approaches are different because the terms are completely different. And I will stop here. Sorry, Dr. Bae, thank you. Yeah, thank you for an opportunity to respond. These are really good questions. I don't really think in terms of secretary, secretary of security versus defense, but I do spend a lot of time thinking about positive and negative peace, which is language that's been used by Dr. Martin Luther King, by peace scientists for generations. And basically refers to this idea that negative peace is reactive. It responds to threats that are arising and it emphasizes having the reach to respond to threats when they occur, where they occur, and providing security in that way. While positive peace is about the implementation of systems and feedback loops, they generate conditions under which violence is not likely to occur in the first place. Sometimes a military response can look too much at the former and not the latter. So the real challenge is in a space that covers three quarters of the world's surface, how do we create these positive feedbacks so that it's not about militaries being able to respond to security threats, it's about conditions and human security being so favorable to prosperity, to peace and communication that violence is unthinkable. And to do that, I think there are three strategies laid out as solutions to any tragedy of the commons that we teach in any introduction to international relations class. Solution number one, have one strong hegemon that can see over the entire system. I would suggest that our world is too multipolar for that to be viable. Solution number two, you start to throw fences in the commons and you privatize, you have individual accountability. And now we try to do that to some extent with our system of exclusive economic zones and territorial waters, but there are limits to that effectiveness. And as both of the other panelists have already mentioned, this marginalizes non-state actors, only governments are going to get any easy for which they can be responsible. And that's where I third, I think the most promises in a third solution which is creating community networks around specific problems. These can include the private sector, they can include private public partnerships. Some of the things that I see Rebecca White mentioned in the Global Fertility Act, I think we need to do that. And I think she's right. The documents do exist. This has been recognized, but in maritime specific policy, I don't see them carried forward into action. Thanks for the question. Thank you. Another question for the group. I'd like to probably start with Dr. Galani and then see if the other speakers have any comments. How has the COVID global pandemic that we've seen uniquely or significantly affected human security in the maritime domain? And would you say by your assessment that we're more vulnerable or more resilient now to similar impacts in the future? Thank you. I think COVID-19 had a tremendous impact on people at sea. And what we see here is what I explained earlier the individual aspect of human security at sea. Because people who were at sea were surprised by port closures and port restrictions. And they were eventually abandoned at sea. And we had very serious issues of human security and human rights. So we saw that with seafarers, for example. And even now it's been almost two years after the outbreak of the pandemic and there are thousands of seafarers who are unable to go back home. We've seen the same with fishes and we've seen that in other cases where passengers had to wait for a very long time in quarantine before they were able to go back home. As a matter of fact, today I was writing a piece about New Zealand seafarers. And New Zealand adopted legislation that eventually distinguishes and discriminates between foreign seafarers and New Zealand seafarers. So foreign seafarers are able to transfer through New Zealand to go back home while New Zealand seafarers are not able to return back to New Zealand because of border closures. But I think COVID-19 had an impact on coastal communities as well. A lot of people in low income countries that were working in the fishing industry, in aquaculture, in aquatourism were significantly affected. They were eventually left with an issuers of income. And as we've seen, unemployment is a root cause of human insecurity that then feeds into many other problems such as legal fishing, piracy, human trafficking, drug trafficking, terrorist attacks, and so on and so forth. So I think the impact of COVID-19, as I said, has caused a tremendous impact on human security, I'd say, both on people who are at sea, but also on the coastal communities. And I'm not entirely sure that it has been taken very seriously into account and it has been factoring in various policies that have been taken in response to COVID-19. Because many times states in their effort to contain the spread of the virus, I completely overlooked the impact that it might have got, the economic impact and the security impact that it had on the people at sea or the coastal communities. Thank you. Thank you. For the group also, a couple of related questions. We're wondering if maybe Dr. LaMonica might have some examples of some work done with potentially some individual coastal communities in patrolling their own environments. If we're unable to do it directly nation to nation or military to military, is there any work getting the local communities to strengthen their ability to patrol their own coasts? And then on a broader note, how can we best boost inter-agency solutions where the DOD is supporting as opposed to the DOD being a lead effort? Right, so because of IU fishing, I've kind of thrown cadets and myself into fisheries management, scholarship and experts. We happen to have people that work on them out at the US Coast Guard Academy. And when you engage with them, what you quickly discover is that their solutions are community based. And that's their policy advice, that essentially they're, you can't rely on local government, you can't, there's no functioning Coast Guard. So you're gonna have to kind of watch each other and patrol, not patrol, watch other fishers and then report them and that kind of thing to the authorities. The problem with that, of course, is virtually no trust in government. I mean, there are deep historical reasons for that, the colonial era. But slowly maritime police are being introduced and there has been some success, notably up in Senegal, where the communities have gotten together to essentially agree and work together to make some progress. I think Octopus was the first success and then they're hoping for other successes and they have agreed on zoning and closed fishing seasons and such. It has not been as successful elsewhere. And I have condensed look at that, like why is it that it's not working in places like Ghana where people insist on fishing and the maritime police have a very tough job because just because there are laws in the books, they can't just go out and arrest people in the fishing communities. I mean, they would be risking their lives doing so. So in a sense, the first step in the process, and they know this, when we talk with them and the local chief fisherman, who people listen to is that they have to be friend, you know, the community, the community has to trust them. It's kind of like, you know, we have the same discussions in our own domestic policing, you know, and that's kind of where they are when it comes to, you know, sort of community policing on, you know, the activities of fishing. And I guess I'll leave it at that. I mean... Thank you, Dr. For the group again, a question in chat is, do you see an increased role for US special forces, specifically maritime special forces, since this is kind of within their purview of dealing with individual humans around the world? Can I jump in on this one? Please. I want to start with the COVID answer first because I think these are really good answers, but I want to add to it. It's going to continue to be the topic. I think COVID has made problems worse. I think it has exposed the fragility of the system at sea upon which our entire way of life depends. And I also worry a bit about complacency now because I think what we're in right now is the transition from the immediate effects, the seafarers who have been abandoned, the loss of employment, many of the things Sophia just mentioned into what the longer-term effects are likely to be. You know, when a catastrophic flood occurs, a river doesn't just return to its previous channels. Sometimes new channels are dug. So over these last 18 months, as we've seen drug trafficking follow new patterns. We've talked about the seizure in Ecuador. Off the coast of Portugal, we just saw the largest seizure ever of cocaine on a sailboat, more than five tons. As patterns of human trafficking change, these are likely to become permanent features and it's going to present whole new human security threats at sea that we need to pay attention to. On this question of what American special forces can do, there, I tend to lean more with the answer that Chris just gave, that many of these solutions are going to be within communities that we probably need to go in with big ears and small mouths and try to understand deeply the root drivers of problems. Now, I think there are many examples where the US military is going to be able to provide exceptional help, especially anything having to do with movement of goods, logistics and all of these things. And I'm sure that, you know, officers working all over the world are going to find intuitive creative ways to do it. But I do think it's going to take focus on communities and not on what other governments are doing. Thanks. Thank you, Curtis. And just due to time, we'll wrap up our panel. I know we've got a couple of other questions lined up and I'll send this out to the different speakers and see if we can get some written responses if they're able to support. I'd really like to extend our thanks to all of our speakers today. This will conclude our panel on human insecurity in the coastal zones of this time and we'll pass it back over to our conference organizer and commander Cameron for comments before the break. I'd like so much to thank Josh Fagan, Sophia Galani, Curtis Bell and Crystal Monica. I'd specifically like to thank Curtis Bell who through his work at Stable Seas connected us with some of the prestigious speakers at this event. What a fantastic way to start today. This takes us to our first break. We will be on break until 1010. And then we'll start at our next panel on criminal activities moderated by our own Admiral Guillermo Barrera. Please join us at 1010. Thank you.