Dr. Eneken Tikk and Amb. Paul Meyer participated for ICT4Peace in the Budapest Conference on Cyberspace 2012 on 4 and 5 October 2012. The Budapest Conference is part of a series of international conferences on critical issues and global challenges in the cyberspace, that started in October 2011 in London and will continue in Korea in 2013. The rationale for the Budapest Conference was as follows: "In two decades, cyberspace has become fundamental to our societies, to the national and global economies, to international relations. It is also a potential domain for conflict. Many States are incorporating cyber capabilities into their militaries. Non-state actors are developing capabilities that can be used for their...

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Kamal Sedra, Senior Advisor of the ICT4Peace Foundation participated in the panel on Digital Culture and Information Society at the ICT4All Forum organized by the Government of Tunisia. Kamal Sedra was also ICT4Peace's key advisor for the first elections since the revolution in Tunisia on 23 October 2011. In that capacity he helped the “Higher Independent Election Committee” or “Instance Supérieure Indépendante pour les Elections” (ISIE) to put in place the online election monitoring platform: “Carte de Controle du Processus Electorale“.

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Please click here for a bi-monthly recap of the Foundation's activities.

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The World Wide Web Foundation on 5 September 2012 launched the first ever comprehensive Web Index – a new country-by-country global study that measures the impact of the Web on the world’s people and nations. The key findings can be found here. Web inventor and Web Foundation founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee hosted an event in London to mark the launch of the Index. He was joined in conversation by two of the world’s leading Web experts: Wael Ghonim, internet activist and Head of Marketing of Google Middle East & North Africa, and Juliana Rotich, co-founder and Executive Director of Ushahidi, the Kenyan crowd-mapping platform. Juliana Rotich is also a member of the ICT4Peace Foundation International Advisory ...

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Having first taught at the ISCRAM Summer School in 2011, ICT4Peace Foundation's Special Advisor Sanjana Hattotuwa was again invited to teach at the 2012 Summer School, held at the University of Tilburg from 15 - 24 August 2012. ISCRAM's Summer School is unique, in that it attracts both senior graduate, post-graduate and post-doctoral students as well as senior policy makers and those with signification field based humanitarian and relief work experience. The format is interactive and informal, with presentations followed by simulations and group work. The ICT4Peace Foundation spoke at length on the state of Crisis Information Management, as well as the future of CiM - with a particular focus on the growing ethical...

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The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, with support from Google, organised a two-day workshop, from 6 -7 August 2012, to advance strategic thinking on how to leverage new technologies to strengthen UN human rights monitoring around the world. Bringing together a small group of United Nations Human Rights Council mandate- holders, leading civil society activists, and technologists working at the intersection of tech and human rights, the workshop aims to develop concrete proposals for how technology platforms can be used to amplify the voices of mandate-holders, broaden their engagement with activists and citizens globally, and inc...

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On 23 August 2012, Simone Eymann on behalf of the ICT4Peace Foundation participated in a one-day consultation, co-organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and InterAction, on "Protection in violent situations: standards for managing sensitive information". In 2009, based on extensive consultations with humanitarian and human rights organizations, the ICRC published a comprehensive set of “Professional standards for protection work”. This publication can be found here. These standards include a chapter on “Managing sensitive protection information” which is now being revised and updated in light of rapidly proliferating initiatives to make new uses of information technology for pr...

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With the UN General Assembly convening next week for the third time the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) to address threats to international information security in the Disarmament and International Security Committee (also known as the First Committee), Dr. Eneken Tikk, Senior Advisor of the ICT4Peace Foundation prepared a brief on the work done by the First Committee in the field of international information security, highlights key national positions, and looks at the challenges facing the upcoming GGE discussions. The past activities of the First Committee include international concerns of nuclear non-proliferation, chemical and biological weapons and weapons of mass destruction. Further, the disarmament of...

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Daniel Stauffacher, President of ICT4Peace and Ambassador Paul Meyer have published an Op-ed on 23 July in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung called "Disarmament Negotiations for the Cyberspace are needed". The English translation of the text can be found here. The original article in German can be downloaded as a PDF from here. The world is facing a new challenge - a modern arms race with no visible weapons and identifiable actors, which is characterized by a growing number of known and hidden attacks on websites of government agencies or infrastructures. It often remains unknown, who ran these attacks, whether by governments or non-state actors. The fact is that new technologies provide in cyberspace a new genera...

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Dr. Eneken Tikk, Senior Advisor, ICT4Peace Foundation, gave a keynote adress on 12 July 2012 at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore, on “Reconciling Westphalia and Cyberspace: ICT and Security Developments Between 1969 and 2012”. This presentation was part of a conference titled: “The Future of Sovereignty in Cyberspace: Developing a Global Architecture for Cybersecurity”. In her keynote Dr. Tikk reminded the audience, that the Internet architecture was originally based on trust and mutual assurance, but soon crossed the borders of initial expectations to the project becoming a global symbiosis of men and machines. Her presentation looked at the milestones of the development of Interne...

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