Dr Alistair D. B. Cook is Coordinator of the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Programme and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interests focus on the Asia-Pacific, and Myanmar in particular, on humanitarian affairs, disaster governance, foreign policy and regional cooperation. He currently serves as the President of the Asia-Pacific Region of the International Studies Association 2018 – 2021. He has recently published Knowledge Management and Humanitarian Organisations in the Asia-Pacific: Practices, Challenges, and Future Pathways (with Mely Caballero-Anthony and Christopher Chen in International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, First view 2020), Disaster governance and prospects of inter-regional partnership in the Asia-Pacific (with Christopher Chen in The Pacific Review, 2020), and Conceptualising humanitarian civil-military partnerships in the Asia-Pacific: (Re-)ordering cooperation (with Sangeetha Yogendran in Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2020). His forthcoming publications include Non-Traditional Security in the Asia-Pacific: A Decade of Perspectives (with Tamara Nair by World Scientific Press, in press) and Humanitarianism in the Asia-Pacific: Engaging the Debate in Policy and Practice (with Lina Gong by Springer, in press). | Email: [email protected] | Twitter: @beancook

Dr Lina Gong is a Research Fellow with the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Programme at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Her research interests include humanitarian studies, global governance, and non-traditional security studies in East Asia. She has published various journal articles, book chapters and edited books related to these areas. Her recent publications include two special journal issues “Humanitarian Diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific, one edited book Humanitarianism in the Asia-Pacific: Humanitarianism in the Asia-Pacific, and one special journal issue “Southeast Asian Nontraditional Security Engagement”.

Ambassador Ong Keng Yong is Executive Deputy Chairman of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is concurrently Director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS) at RSIS.

Mr Ong continues to hold the position of Ambassador-at-Large at the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is also Singapore’s Non-Resident High Commissioner to Pakistan and Non-Resident Ambassador to Iran. Mr Ong has been the Chairman of the Singapore International Foundation (SIF) since 2015.

Mr Ong was High Commissioner of Singapore to Malaysia from 2011 to 2014. He served as High Commissioner of Singapore to India and concurrently Singapore’s Ambassador to Nepal from 1996 to 1998.

Mr Ong served as 11th Secretary-General of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), based in Jakarta, Indonesia, from January 2003 to January 2008.

Mr Ong started his diplomatic career in 1979 and was posted to the Singapore Embassies in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and the United States of America between 1984 and 1994. From September 1998 to December 2002, he was Press Secretary to the then Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr Goh Chok Tong, while holding senior appointments in the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, and the People’s Association in Singapore. From 2008 to 2011, he served as Director of the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Mr Ong graduated from the then University of Singapore with a LLB (Hons). He studied at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., USA, and graduated with a MA in Arab Studies.

After serving 35 years in the IPS (Indian Police Service), Dr. PM Nair, (MA & PhD in Sociology and LLB), retired from the Government as Director General (National Head) of the four agencies of Govt. of India, viz., the National Disaster Response Force, the Civil Defence, the Home Guards and the Fire Services.

In this position, he has attended several aspects of disaster preparation management, response mitigation, disaster prevention, etc.  The tasks included humanitarian affairs including planning, application and policy formulation.  Civil, military partnership in disaster was one of the significant activity in the job profile.

Dr. Nair has been serving as Head of the Police force in several districts in India where he was called upon to attend to the matters of Civil and military partnership in different types of disasters including floods, earthquake, riots and so on. While serving as the Inspector General of CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) in Jammu & Kashmir, he was called upon to attend to the entire response and mitigation activities in India in the context of the Afghanistan-centred massive earthquake, as well as heavy snow fall, leading to several calamities.

As the head of the National disaster response system, he had brought out a ‘National Grid’ on disaster response and mitigation by identifying the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders in a matrix which could bring in seamless responsibility sharing and synergic actions.

Dr. Nair has brought in several significant changes in the response systems including gender sensitization and child sensitization responses.  The theory and practice adopted by him was synergic partnership of all stakeholders, transforming them from stakeholders to duty holders.  This helped the communities in a significant way in building disaster resilience.  Dr. Nair is also an international expert on human trafficking matters, having served with several Government agencies in India including Police, CBI, etc. as well as the Human Rights Commission and the United Nations.  He has personally rescued thousands of victims of trafficking and facilitated rescue of more than 60,000 victims of trafficking. This includes victims from disaster scenario also.  He has personally trained more than 110,000 stakeholders in the process.  After leaving the Govt., he worked as Professor with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, for six years carrying out research, teaching and training in all related matters including disaster preparedness and mitigation.  Presently, he is an Advisor and Expert Resource faculty with several Universities/ premier institutions in India.

The President of India has awarded Dr. PM Nair with the Medal for Meritorious Service and the Medal for Distinguished Services.  He has been recipient of several commendations and letters of Appreciation from the Supreme Court and Government of India.

Professor Hideshi TOKUCHI served as the nation’s first-ever Vice-Minister of Defense for International Affairs from 2014 to 2015 after completing several senior assignments in the Ministry of Defense, including the Director-General of Defense Policy Bureau, of Budget and Equipment Bureau, of Personnel and Education Bureau, and of Operations Bureau.

He has been the President of the Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS), an independent think-tank in Tokyo, since June 2021. He is teaching security studies at a number of universities in Tokyo as well.

He earned his Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Tokyo in 1979, and his Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (M.A.L.D.) degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1986.

Rahmawati (Ama) Husein is as an Advisory Board member of the Indonesian National Disaster Management Agency. She is also a vice chair of Muhammadiyah Disaster Management Center (MDMC), a unit of Muhammadiyah Organization, one of the largest FBOs/NGOs/CBOs in Indonesia with 35 million members, which respond to 50-75 disasters/crisis annually. Currently,  she serves as a committee member of Indonesian Humanitarian Alliance for Rohingya Refugees both in Myanmar and Bangladesh as well as an executive board of Humanitarian Forum Indonesia(HFI), an interfaith-based organization forum and a member of Humanitarian Country Team (HCT). She is also an assistant professor of the Jusuf Kalla School of Government, Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, where she teaches urban and development planning, disaster management, and research methods. She has been working in disaster/humanitarian related works for more than15 years. Since 2018, she was selected as an Advisory Group of United Nation Central Emergency Respond Fund.

Professor Randolph Kent is the director of the Humanitarian Futures initiative and website. He also is a Visiting Professor at the African Leadership Centre, King’s College, London, and is working with the Royal United Services Institute on an initiative called the Futures Project.

Tiffanie Lau is the Deputy Director of the Strategic Futures team, in the Ministry of Defence Singapore (MINDEF). She has also been involved in contingency planning and incident management, in the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Her current team’s mission is to ensure that MINDEF and the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) is well positioned for its future operating environment. They do so by employing foresight methodologies to make sense of the evolving landscape, and spot opportunities for MINDEF/SAF to stay ahead of disruption.

Tiffanie was also involved in spearheading MINDEF/SAF’s climate strategy. She has co-written an article for the Centre for Strategic Futures’ Conversations For The Future Vol. 3, on how MINDEF/SAF translated foresight to strategy in the climate domain.