Addressing Human Security Challenges in the Atlantic Space:
Where Can Pan-Atlantic Cooperation Make a Difference?

Joint Strategy Group on Human Security in the Atlantic

A project of the Atlantic Centre, the Transatlantic Leadership Network, and Johns Hopkins University’s Foreign Policy Institute

Growing interactions among the four continents of the Atlantic Basin are creating new opportunities. Yet they are also creating vulnerabilities that can lead to disruption of such critical functions as transportation, energy and data flows, food supply chains and business systems, communications, and financial networks. Human trafficking, flows of drugs and arms, cyber threats, money laundering, corruption, piracy, political instability, terrorist infiltration, and disease are all becoming concerns of pan-Atlantic scope: they affect all four Atlantic continents, Europe, Africa, North and South America. Human security–protecting people from violence or disruption–is as much of a driver as state security when it comes to the need for pan-Atlantic cooperation. Furthermore, these security challenges tend to be common and thus present an opportunity to unite efforts and test new modes of governance. Yet there are no pan-Atlantic mechanisms to address these security challenges.

The Strategy Group

Together, we convened an independent Strategy Group of leading experts and stakeholders from the four Atlantic continents to chart current threats, identify gaps in response networks, discuss where greater pan-Atlantic cooperation might mitigate such threats, and offer practical recommendations to governments and other actors. Members.

Policy Briefs

• Understanding and addressing the drivers behind the nexus of blue crime, drugs, piracy, and terror prevalent across the Atlantic, Vice Admiral Issah Adam Yakubu, Executive Chairman, Gulf of Guinea Maritime Institute, Accra, Ghana
• Understanding and Addressing Atlantic Human Security Threats: Drugs, Guns, Piracy, and Terror, Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, King’s College London
• Securing the Atlantic Commons: Critical Maritime Infrastructure, Asymmetric Threats, and the Imperative for Cooperative Resilience, Julian Orlando Quintero Ibáñez, Head of Research, Naval Academy of Strategic Studies, Colombia
• Maritime Domain Awareness in the Atlantic: Strengthening Information Sharing for Regional Cooperation, Christian Bueger, University of Copenhagen
• Understanding and addressing linkages between maritime security and land-based human insecurities, Jamal Machrouh, Senior Fellow, Policy Center for the New South, Morocco
• How to Understand and Address the Links Between Maritime Security and Human Security Vulnerabilities on Land, Adolfo Rossi, National Defense University, Argentina

Other Relevant Publications

• Evolving Human Security Challenges in the Atlantic Space
• Dark Networks: Evolving Security Challenges in the Atlantic Basin (2014)