The Gulf Research Center

Will Organize Workshop in Cooperation with the Henry L. Stimson Center

Regional Voices – Transnational Challenges: Maritime Issues

October 7-8, 2008

Dubai

As part of the cooperation between the Gulf Research Center and the Henry L. Stimson Center, the GRC is participating in the Stimson Center’s project entitled Regional Voices: Transnational Challenges. This project seeks to gain understanding of emerging transnational challenges in the regions stretching from the Horn of Africa to the Straits of Malacca.  The boundaries of the Regional Voices: Transnational Challenges project are broad and includes a range of topics from transnational ideological movements, terrorism, transnational crime and political culture to natural resource exploitation, pandemic diseases, climate and other environmental change, water, and food security. The aim is to seek to understand the relationships among these, and to understand the capacities of states, societies and regional and international organizations to cope with them. 

The meeting on maritime issues is an open exploration of current realities and emerging concerns in the Indian Ocean region. Some of the topics are social and economic – from the rising importance of the region in global trade to the tragedy of human trafficking.  Other topics are scientific, such as fisheries and environmental degradation.  Yet others are in a more traditional security realm, with rising Asian powers looking to naval prowess as one aspect of their national power and influence, and the concern of all littoral states to protect energy supplies and prevent terrorism and proliferation of illicit weapons and materials. The meeting will explore all these issues, and try to illuminate how they interact and present new security dilemmas for states and societies.