Indian Navy’s Goa Maritime Symposium to commence from Monday

New Delhi: The fourth edition of the Goa Maritime Symposium (GMS) is being conducted by the Naval War College (NWC) at Goa from 31 October to 1 November 2022, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

“The participants of the Symposium comprise Captains/ Commanders and equivalent-rank officers from Navies/ Maritime forces from friendly foreign countries viz., Bangladesh, Comoros, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Myanmar, Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, besides India,” the ministry said.

Conceptualised and instituted by the Indian Navy in 2016, the GMS is a forum for fostering collaborative thinking, cooperation and mutual understanding between India and key maritime nations of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), it added.

The symposium is conducted biennially by the NWC, Goa, and three editions of the event have been organised thus far. The Symposium will be inaugurated by Rear Admiral Rajesh Dhankhar, Commandant, Naval War College.

With the IOR becoming the focus of the 21st Century strategic landscape, the Symposium plays a constructive role in bringing together stakeholders for evolving policies, strategies and implementation mechanisms for comprehensive security in the maritime domain.

“The theme of GMS-2022 is “Maritime Security Challenges in the Indian Ocean Region: Converting Common Maritime Priorities into Collaborative Mitigation Frameworks”,” the ministry said.

The theme is underpinned by the idea of ‘Security and Growth for All in the Region’ (SAGAR) and five principles of maritime security enunciated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which imply that the prosperity of our region is interlinked with the maritime fate of all IOR littorals.