A short interview with Gavin Birrel, from the New Zealand Ministry of Transport.
How do you see IORIS supporting the role of your organization?
It helps us overcome our geographic challenge: New Zealand and our South Pacific neighbours are a long way from anywhere else, and with our low populations and large maritime areas, we co-operate with each other to prevent or respond to shared problems. IORIS gives us secure communications with each other to coordinate that support.
What’s the biggest threat to maritime security in your region that can be addressed through cooperation?
Our approach to security is regional – it’s centred in the Boe Declaration, which is an expansive concept of security, it puts humans and the environment at the heart of our region’s security, so we would say climate change is our biggest maritime security threat for our region. We are seeing larger and more impacts on mariners and on our coasts. Co-operation is key to getting to increase successful outcomes for mariners. What’s essential for maintaining strong regional partnerships ?
I think it’s access to a quality information sharing tool, it makes it easy for our regional staffs to talk to each other.
What’s one challenge you hope we address during this meeting?
Can I choose geography again? New Zealand’s maritime area of interest is 1/12th of the globe and being able to engage with maritime security professionals from 40+ agencies from more than 25 countries at one meeting is invaluable for us. We get to contribute to, and benefit from collective experiences as we all step up to manage shared maritime challenges.

Nelson Delicieux Mihajaritiana, International Liaison Officer for Madagascar. IORIS is a communication tool for interagency cooperation. In our everyday task at the RCOC (Regional Coordination Operations Centre) we use IORIS to coordinate operations. We’ve multiple agencies not only from one country, but from many other countries. By sending a single message on IORIS, the RCOC is able to reach all the agencies participating in operation. What’s the biggest threat to maritime security in your region that can be addressed through cooperation? From our experience at the RCOC there is a hotspot of threats in our region (Indian Ocena Region). For some areas it can be Illegal Unreported and Unregulated Fishing, in another area it can be illegal migration, in another you may see all types of illegal trafficking, such as drugs or species trafficking. Personally, I think the major threat in our region is drug trafficking. You can fight it at the point of origin, or at the points of arrival, or also in the middle, but whatever strategy you will choose, you need the cooperation of everyone to be successful. What’s essential for maintaining strong regional partnerships? I believe that for maintaining a stronger regional partnership it is essential to have trust between the representatives of each state. For example, the regional maritime security architecture, of which the RCOC is parts, was created on the trust between the representatives of the States and the organisation. Now there are more states expressing the interest to join the framework. This is because they see that they can trust the organisation. I think to have a strong regional partnership it is essential to have trust between the representative of the states.