Jaishankar to visit Maldives for Indian Ocean Conference

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is slated to participate in the fourth Indian Ocean Conference 2019, which will take place in the Maldives from September 3 to 4.

The EAM is listed as one of the speakers at the event.

Apart from him, the Maldives' President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Foreign Ministers of Singapore, Maldives, Mauritius, Nepal and Bhutan are expected to be at the conference.

The theme of the fourth Indian Ocean Conference - IOC 2019 - is "Securing the Indian Ocean Region: Traditional and Non-Traditional Challenges".

The first edition of the conference was hosted in Singapore in 2016 followed by two successive editions in Sri Lanka and Vietnam respectively.

The upcoming IOC will deliberate on developing an effective regional institutional mechanism for implementation of prevailing norms and rules. In continuation with the past, this edition of the conference too will provide yet another opportunity for stakeholders of the Indian Ocean Region to deliberate on building an institutional framework for managing the threats to regional peace and human security.

The conference will be addressed by speakers from over 35 countries including the President of Maldives and the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. Ministers from 17 countries, officials from 16 countries and scholars from over 10 countries, amongst others, are also expected to be present for the two-day event.