Led by the UN’s Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) and organised by the ICT4Peace Foundation, the 2013 Crisis Information Management Advisory Group (CiMAG) meeting was held on 2nd and 3rd May in Glen Cove, New York. Representatives from UNOCC, UNITAR, UNDP BCPR, UNICEF, OHCHR, OICT, OCHA, DFS/DPKO, UNHCR and UNOSAT participated along with, on the second day, representatives from Google Crisis Response, Human Rights Watch, Sahana Software Foundation, Standby Volunteer Task Force, World Bank OpenDRI. Representatives from the New Media Task Force were invited but due to unavoidable circumstances, could not attend.

Overall observations

1. It was the best-attended CiMAG retreat thus far, with over 30 participants from the UN and the crisismapping community participating over the two days. The retreat also had the most substantive discussions around information sharing as well as data architecture, a key component of the Crisis Information Management (CiM) strategy of any CiMAG retreat held to date.
2. A substantial interest in, enthusiasm for and commitment to CiMS and the CiMAG process by its members.
3. The expansion of CiMAG to include new UN agencies, like the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) and the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO).
4. CiMAG members agreed that an annual retreat was insufficient to implement CiMS, collectively address critical issues and move the process forward. Perhaps a bi-annual meeting is required, but more importantly a small secretariat, ideally located at the OICT/CITO’s office to manage the CiM process and facilitate problem solving processes, provide a market place for ideas and solutions, provide strategic input and guidance for members of CiMAG in relation to crisis information management, arrange meetings with interested CiMAG members, including and as required with technology providers.
5. The newly established UNOCC and its mandate vis-à-vis the Secretary General on one hand and CiMAG members on the other was considered an excellent driver for implementing CiMS both at HQ and field level. UNOCC agreed to play a catalytic role (“somewhere to put on the hat”), but considers responsibility for CiMS remains with CiMAG members and support role of the CITO/OICT.
6. The Humanitarian Exchange Language (HXL), proposed by OCHA, was considered an excellent driver for CiMS, both on the data and technology side.
7. Considering the four pillars of CiMS: (1) data architecture work will continue with the building of a COD/FOD/HXL Data Service (with support for OCHA, inter alia, from ICT4Peace and Switzerland’s ETH); (2) Technology Development with inter alia HXL (OCHA with UNHCR and support of ICT4Peace); (3) Stake-holder Management with COI and DHN Summit with support of ICT4Peace; (4) Capacity Building: Curricula Development and courses by OCHA, UNHCR, UNICEF and ICT4Peace respectively, and/or in collaboration.
8. DPKO/DFS, a founding member of CiMAG and contributor to CiMS stocktaking report of 2009, highlighted again the high value of COD/FOD/HXL Data Service also for situational awareness creation in peacekeeping and peacebuilding respectively, as well as well peacekeeping cum humanitarian missions. They offered valuable support to its implementation and utilisation. In particular DFS offered to provide to the HXL development: (1) Infrastructure support from Brindisi and/or Valencia; (2) Make available support of in-house developers; (3) Provide GIS capabilities; (4) Contribute financially to establishment of CiMAG Secretariat in CITO office (in collaboration and consultation with Salem Avan).
9. ICT4Peace was invited to assist in the establishment of the CiMAG Secretariat in developing TOR for Secretariat and staff, looking for candidates, the development of a tentative work plan from 2013 to 2016 in cooperation with Salem Avan, Susanna Shanahan, Rudy Sanchez and other members of CiMAG.
10. ICT4Peace was invited to make a joint field visit in June 2013 with DFS of a peacekeeping mission (MONUSCO) to observe its CiM capabilities and practices from a CiMS perspective, including in its relation with HQ and OCC.

Download the full report from here.

Dutch Red Cross worker Meike Groen, working for the ICRC in Haiti, helps people use the satellite phone to reassure relatives that they are alive, via Flickr. © ICRC / Marko Kokic / ht-e-00459 / www.icrc.org

ICRC and InterAction: Consultation on “Protection in violent situations – standards for managing sensitive information”

Date and Location: 23 August 2012, Washington DC

Participants: Civilians in Conflict, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, ICRC, ICT4Peace Foundation, IMMAP, InterAction, International Rescue Committee, Sahana Foundation, Standby Task Force, Ushahidi, World Vision,

Contact at ICRC: Guilhelm Ravier, gravier@icric.org

ICT4Peace Foundation represented and this note penned by Simone Eymann.

Background

In August 2012, the ICT4Peace Foundation, together with a diverse group of human rights and humanitarian actors, was invited by the International Red Cross to comment on the revised draft of their “Professional standards for protection work” from 2009. The standards were developed to ensure that protection work by humanitarian and human rights actors meets commonly agreed minimum professional standards, a baseline to be respected by all.

Revised standards

New technologies, such as mobile phones, social media, google map and satellite imagery, combined with new methodologies, such as crowd-sourcing and crisis mapping, have changed the access to protection information for humanitarian and human rights actors on the ground and for the population affected by violence. Many actors already use new technologies to collect and publicize information about humanitarian crises, much of which could be considered sensitive protection information, even if the individual or team collecting it are not necessarily “protection actors”.

In light of this developing practice, participants were asked to give specific advice on the scope and the language of the revised standards on the chapter “Managing sensitive protection information”. While not per se a protection activity, data collection and management is an integral part of many protection activities. Despite the sensitive nature of these data, their management is often substandard, owing lack of knowledge, expertise and capacity. This chapter was primarily addressed to protection actors who conduct interviews with witnesses or victims on a regular basis, as well as those, which receive or use such information collected by others.

Discussions among the participants focused on risks and manipulation of crowd-sourced data, informed consent when collecting information remotely, challenges of data interpretation with remotely collected information, and public sharing of sensitive information.

Risk and Manipulation of crowd-sourced data

The participants agreed that more thought should be given to the objectives of crowd-sourcing of information, data analysis and curation and suggested adding a separate guideline on analysis which should also include curation rules. In order to analyze the vast amount of data and to recognize false data early, posts for senior analytics officers should be created. So far, only communications specialists and press officers are identified in the standards (guideline 33). Examining datasets by professional analysts over a period of time could help discover deception. In response to the question if humanitarian actors should work with, or take into account in their assessment and planning, information from sites that clearly favour one side in a conflict at the risk of presenting a partial picture of what is happening on the ground, the participants recommended that all protection data, even if it was suspected to have been manipulated, should be considered in order to understand the dynamics of information in an environment. However, it should be tagged properly. A paragraph should be added to guideline 34 on threat analysis. In addition, the security of data should be regularly reviewed. Throughout the chapter, it would be better to clearly separate first-hand and crowd-sourced information gathering. A new guideline on how to communicate with communities via new technologies should be added.

Informed consent

How should the standard of informed consent be understood when collecting information remotely and not in a face-to-face setting and what are the challenges if someone was to remove consent remotely? The standards should give more attention to the problematic of information gathering from under-aged or mentally disabled persons. Professional, ethical and legal limitations of confidentiality should be considered and mandatory reporting be disclosed. The power relation between the person who is giving information and the person, who is receiving it, should be reflected. On the ground, the notion of informed consent cannot always be integrated, and, therefore, the sources of information should be maximized. Creating incentives should be avoided: remote info gathering should not be coupled with services. One of the problems on the ground is that it is not always clear if the person who is giving information is speaking on behalf of a larger group (e.g. household).

Public sharing of sensitive information

How does the public sharing of sensitive information affect the risks faced by civilian populations and humanitarian operations? It should always be clear what the benefits of going public are. With ICTs, we should be more sensitive to risk because of the added context provided by triangulation. There should be a distinction between aggregation of information and information that can put people at risk. If information is publicly shared, it needs to be adjusted temporarily and spatially, which also avoids the issue of providing information to military. Regular risk assessments for the system needed a feedback mechanism. To minimize risks, some degree of uncertainty in the data has to be accepted. There should be an obligation to share information that, if withheld, can do harm (mine locations), and by sharing, can benefit. Before publishing sensitive information, actors should look at the context of the country.

Way Forward

The ICT4Peace Foundation sent in detailed comments about the substance of the revised standards and suggested re-structuring the chapters from ”Information Collection”, to “Data Analysis”, to “Information-Sharing”. Since the standards have so far only been used at the organizational level, the ICT4Peace Foundation stressed the need to make the standards more “user-friendly” for field personnel with an online tutorial and/or a shorter version of the standards. Currently, they are only used at the organizational level. The revised version should be published in April 2013. The ICRC informed the ICT4Peace Foundation in January 2013 that an e-Learning course on “Managing of sensitive protection information” was being developed for field staff.

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Simone Eymann currently works for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) as a Consultant on ICT for Development and Communications.

Previously, Simone has worked as a consultant in the area of ICT 4 Peace for the UN Department of Public Information (DPI) and the UN Department of Political Affairs (DPA), for communications offices in the private sector and as a producer and assistant for internationally acclaimed photographers and documentary filmmakers. 

She holds a M.A. in mass communication and media research, political science and constitutional law from the University of Zurich.

Sanjana Hattotuwa, Special Advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation, delivered a public lecture on Big Data & social media for crisis management at Zurich’s Swiss Federal Institute of Technology – ETH, one of the leading international universities for technology and the natural sciences in the world. The Foundation was invited by Prof. Dirk Helbing, Chair of Sociology, in particular of Modelling and Simulation. ICT4Peace is an active partner of Prof. Helbing’s FuturICT project.

Sanjana’s presentation looked at events on the ground from his home country, Sri Lanka, as well as, at the time of the presentation, content generation on and around the bombings at the Boston marathon, as key examples of how today information is produced at exponentially increasing rates, leading to new ethical, philosophical, scientific, journalistic, scientific, computational and other challenges, as well as opportunities.

The presentation looked at cities around the world, including from the African subcontinent, embracing big data and making decades of hitherto closed or hard to access information available, for free, in the public domain via the web, and relevant APIs and frameworks. The presentation looked at how even the UN, often perceived as extremely conservative and conventional, is today leading the way in flagging the value of big data and leading the development of platforms as well as political leadership to meaningfully use it in key operations. Through information visualisations, Sanjana demonstrated just how much a city’s contours and its population movements could be tracked. Examples were also shown from the world of data driven journalism – how big data, from its production to its consumption and open analysis, is changing the way the news is generated, distributed and engaged with.

The presentation focussed on the impact of big data in humanitarian aid and relief operations, including with the UN OCHA and other key humanitarian actors in the UN system. After going into how digital cartography today is no longer the exclusive domain of GIS experts, Sanjana also flagged key drivers from other domains – from algorithms in the online music industry that can sift through millions of tracks in less than a second to the gamification of disaster response – that will drive both the awareness of big data as well as progress in actually leveraging its potential to really make an impact in the efficiency and effectiveness of relief work.

Finally, Sanjana touched more deeply on some of the ethical and rights based concerns over the generation, use and archival of big data, especially around humanitarian disasters in fragile States, and in post-war contexts. Ending on the note that sharing, not hoarding, firewalling and storing, is the new power, Sanjana flagged the report by the ICT4Peace Foundation The potential and challenges of open data for crisis information management and aid efficiency.

Sanjana Hattotuwa delivering lecture

Image courtesy UN

Sanjana Hattotuwa, Special Advisor at the ICT4Peace Foundation, was invited to deliver a presentation at Centre for International Peace Operations (ZIF) in Berlin, Germany, on 15 April 2013. A short write up about the presentation on the ZIF website can be read here.

The ICT4Peace Foundation works closely together with ZIF in the design and implementation of the Crisis Information Management course, which was last delivered in Nairobi, Kenya in February/March 2013.

Sanjana’s presentation focussed on how Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) were contributing to a paradigm shift in the praxis, study and design of peacekeeping, peacebuilding, election monitoring and humanitarian aid. Sanjana ended by looking at how leading institutions like ZIF could leverage social and new media to strengthen all aspects of their programming, and by doing so, add value to existing training programmes.

The ICT4Peace Foundation recognises UN OCHA’s new publication Humanitarianism in the Network Age as a significant contribution to our understanding of how new technologies including new web based social media, are reshaping our fundamental understanding as well as the design and delivery of humanitarian aid and relief work across the world, and indeed, beyond the UN.

The report cites our publication Peacebuilding in the Information Age: Sifting Hype from Reality. As far back as 2011, the Foundation’s paper looked at difficult questions and provided concrete recommendations concerning:

• the effectiveness of current systems of crisis information management;
• the need for a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of the use of ICTs in crisis response by the academic community;
• the need for better coordinative mechanisms amongst the key players, including the UN and its various agencies;
• the humanitarian responsibility of various actors, in particular new players such as crowdsourcing providers and social media;
• the serious challenges that still need to be overcome in terms of underlying political, hierarchical and traditional resistance to information-sharing amongst diverse organizations;
• the negative potential of ICTs in compromising the security of persons at risk in conflict situations;
• the lessons learned from the earthquake in Haiti on the use of new ICTs in disaster response situations and,
• the big picture of what this shift to an ICT-focused approach really means for existing humanitarian response systems.

OCHA new paper underscores many of these points and records notable developments in the field since 2011.

The ICT4Peace Foundation has worked very closely with OCHA to develop best practices around the use of new media in aid, crisis information management, interfacing and working with volunteer and technical communities (V&TCs) that are now global in nature and local in impact, helped establish vital platforms for the dissemination of fundamentally important datasets of UN member states in relation to disaster risk reduction and crisis response, helped ideate and communicate pathbreaking new technologies like HXL, supported exercises led by OCHA that have strengthened the work of digital humanitarians, published papers on Big Data and humanitarian aid and every year, convened leading UN agencies, including OCHA, and some of the world’s most recognised and respected actors from V&TCs as part of the Crisis Information Management Advisory Group (CiMAG) retreats held in New York.

All this work is carefully documented on our website. OCHA’s new report avers,

The network age, with its increased reach of communications networks and the growing groups of people willing and able to help those in need, is here today. The ways in which people interact will change, with or without the sanction of international humanitarian organizations. Either those organizations adapt to the network age, or they grow increasingly out of touch with the people they were established to serve.

If they choose to adapt, an old dream— enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—has a chance of coming true: that all people gain the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media, regardless of any frontiers. That is a goal worth pursuing.

As the institutional and global custodian of Paragraph 36 of the WSIS Declaration, is it heartening to recognise renewed political leadership, at the UN and the global level, to more fully embrace the potential of ICTs to – after sudden onset and even during longer term political emergencies – generate, analyse, disseminate, contextualise, visualise, archive and action information that can save lives and strengthen human dignity.

Since the first cohort of students over three years ago, the ICT4Peace Foundation has lectured at the Master of Advanced Studies in Humanitarian Logistics and Management at the University of Lugano. Led by Sanjana Hattotuwa, the Foundation’s modules are broadly anchored around two key areas – one, the impact of new and social media on the web, Internet and via mobiles on humanitarian aid, situational awareness and more effective design and delivery of relief systems. Two, an overnight simulation exercise, based loosely around the Haiti earthquake, that takes students to around 30 of the leading humanitarian websites as well as new media platforms and portals and gets them to search for, compare and verify information on them, as well as collaborate and produce information using them.

This year, the Foundation introduced a new online collaborative mapping exercise to this simulation, based on the new Google Map Engine Lite.

Over the two and a half days of teaching, the ICT4Peace Foundation is joined by UN OCHA or UNHCR, represented over the years by Andrew Alspach. Together, the modules deal with,

• The IM Process
• ICTs and new media in Crisis Information Management System: New tools, new actors (ICT4Peace)
• Analysis in the humanitarian context
• Verification of online information (ICT4Peace)
• Practical exercise in Crisis Information Management including online mapping (Simulation)
• Reporting back on simulation exercise (ICT4Peace)
• Modules on IM Process (UNHCR)

We have noticed that with each cohort, competencies with and awareness of web based social & new media platforms, as well as aid, relief and data portals by and outside the UN is increasing. The Foundation, along with our partner UNHCR/OCHA, is keen to broaden and deepen this knowledge through the unique opportunity afforded by the Master of Advanced Studies in Humanitarian Logistics and Management.

Admissions are accepted on a rolling basis by the University. Please consider applying.

Sanjana Hattotuwa will give a public talk at Zurich’s world renowned ETH on big data and social media for crisis management on 16th April, from 17:00 – 19:00hrs. Details on the ETH website here.

Those interested in the topic can read The potential and challenges of open data for crisis information management and aid efficiency: A preliminary assessment published by the ICT4Peace Foundation in March 2012.

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

The ICT4Peace Foundation on Tuesday, 12th March met with The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)’s Peace Mission Support and Rapid Response Section. Several discussions with the PMSRRS have occurred over 2012 on ways to support OHCHR’s mandate with the use of ICTs. Discussions this week focussed on information security and in particular the challenges of leveraging crowdsourced data into situational analysis.

Presented with a list of key challenges and needs by the PMSRRS, the Foundation developed a matrix of ICT options, as well as key presentations to help build internal staff capacity to deal with crowdsourced information verification and greater awareness about field and HQ information security. Discussions also centred around supporting the mandates of Commissions of Inquiry through greater use of ICTs to facilitate data collection, stakeholder interaction, data retention, visualisation and archival, in a secure manner. The importance of open standards was emphasised by the ICT4Peace Foundation to fight against the dangers of data lock-in and the challenges of sustaining platforms based on proprietary code and point-solutions. The Foundation also underscored the need for OHCHR to create resilient information architectures for civil society and NGOs involved in human rights advocacy, activism and protection to more easily and robustly communicate key updates from the field.

At the meeting, PMSRRS underscored the enduring interest in and commitment at OHCHR to adopt and adapt ICTs in their vital, global mandate. Given the sustained interactions with and the quality of strategic, real world experience based advice given to PMSRRS on the use of ICTs for human rights protection and promotion, the Foundation was invited to be part of these vital discussions moving forward.

As the Institute’s event page notes,

Representatives of the UN-accredited organization ICT4Peace will present their work, with support of visual demonstrations, on Crisis Information Management and the role of information and communication technologies in this.

Information and communication technologies are crucial in obtaining, communicating and transmitting accurate and timely crisis information and hence to effectuate an appropriate response to man-made and natural disasters. How can we make better use of the vast amount of data that is already – openly accessible – online. Improved (Big) data analysis and (Big) data mining could provide an opportunity. Through the collection and subsequent analysis of such data, verified and timely crisis information can be provided.

3TU.Ethics and Delft University of Technology (Department of Values Technology and Innovation) are considering in collaboration with others to explore the possibilities of establishing such a platform of big data analysis and ‘reality mining’ that could provide input for accurate policy and decision making in light of crisis response. Big data analysis could and should provide valuable information for conflict prevention, crisis response and restorative justice endeavours.

Daniel Stauffacher’s presentation focussed on the Foundation’s sustained and significant work since 2008 with the United Nations system on crisis information management, and in particular the development of the UN’s crisis information management strategy.

Sanjana Hattotuwa was asked by 3TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology to focus on the opportunities for Big Data to be used in crisis information management, and ended his presentation by problematising some of the assumptions around the availability and use of big and open data in conflict transformation. Taking a rights based perspective, Sanjana offered key examples of Big Data on the web that could be useful in granular as well as contextual situational awareness, and also flagged work he had done to curate, archive and visualise, for posterity, thousands of tweets on human rights anchored to specific country review processes at the UN in Geneva. He also flagged some of the platforms now used by the UN and the crisismapping community that represent a paradigm shift in the way data, in anticipation of, during and just after a sudden onset disaster as well as other crises are generated, mapped, analysed, disseminated, visualised and archived.

A lively discussion with the participants ensued after the presentation, focussing on the challenges of data gathering in low bandwidth and high latency contexts, just after a disaster when telecoms would almost certainly be down or overburdened, the challenges of semantic analysis around dangerous and hate speech especially in languages other than English or those based on a Romanic script, the use and adaptations of social media in China and the challenge of mapping conversations on online social and new media in order to red flag instances where, for examples in a peace process or fragile post-war context, the breakdown of conversations could be a marker or increased social, partisan or communal tension.

Sanjana flagged key research reports, organisations, individuals and institutions including UN agencies at the cutting edge of innovation in this domain, key technology trends, real world examples, platforms, tools and apps, significant challenges, including ethical issues and possible future scenarios in engaging with the participants.

Also read the ICT4Peace Foundation’s report titled The potential and challenges of open data for crisis information management and aid efficiency: A preliminary assessment and Sanjana Hattotuwa’s blog post on A brief exploration of Open and Big Data: From investigative journalism to humanitarian aid and peacebuilding.

After having been rather illiterate in the field of Social Media and the huge potential it offers, and only being able to receive a first glimpse through an online course conducted by the TechChange Institute for Technology and Social Change, I was delighted when the German Center for International Peace Operations, in close cooperation with various other organizations, thereunder the ICT4Peace Foundation offered a Crisis Information Management (CIM) course in Nairobi, Kenya.

Amongst the various CIM tools covered by the course was also the use of Social Media. Hence, I was delighted to be given the opportunity to deepen my knowledge in that particular field. The ICT4Peace, represented by Mr Sanjana Hattotuwa, one of the best teachers I ever experienced by the way, though only revealing the tip of the iceberg, opened a whole new world to me as a Security Risk Manager. Tasks such as information gathering, incident and conflict mapping, travel security, crisis and information management are an everyday challenge and require a variety of sophisticated and very expensive tools. Without further elaborating on the subject: Social Media has the potential to revolutionize this and gives smaller organizations solutions at literally no cost. But I’m wandering from the subject.

The author during a visit to the iHub, as part of the course at IPSTC

Back to Kenya where subsequent to the course the 2013′s presidential elections took place and I was foresighted enough to not fly back home directly. To cut a long story short: I participated at another training in Nairobi’s iHub, Kenya’s version of the Silicon Valley and home to a company which provides some one of the most sophisticated Social Media tools I discovered so far: Ushahidi. One of these tools is Uchaguzi, exclusively developed to crowdsource information on the polls and subject to the training mentioned above.

Up to this point it was just an extension to the lectures I had received from Sanjana and that in itself would have been good enough. But than fate would strike me by letting me cross the path of a former colleague and friend of mine, who was hired to supervise the CIM of a huge company. However, given that a new outbreak of hostilities between the various ethnicities was not unlikely, as it was the case in the aftermath of the presidential elections of 2007/08, I was immediately hijacked to support him. And I gladly let it happen as it would give me an opportunity to apply the newly gained knowledge in real life.

When engaged in information gathering it is of utmost importance to utilize as many sources as possible. You have your personal network, which shares information with you, you have your people on the ground and all kinds of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) in earlier times mostly mainstream media. While your personal network in a new environment is most likely to be not that extensive and your (professional) sources on the ground are limited for obvious reasons, mainstream media mostly gives you already processed information that on top of it is often delayed. Receiving real-time information from the ground on a large scale was a thing one could only dream of. Here is where crowdsourced information, in the following especially Uchaguzi, kicks in and adds a new dimension to information gathering.

Uchaguzi basically allows everybody with a mobile phone or access to the internet to submit information via SMS, email, Twitter etc. to the Uchaguzi website where it is mapped in real-time. A dedicated team of volunteers edits these reports, i.e. translates, geolocates and verifies it by sending people to the field. Of course, due to the huge amount of information received, not every report can be verified but this is clearly indicated on the platform.

I need to make a preliminary remark: Public unrest is all about group dynamics and expecting it can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let me put it that way: If you expect someone to attack you, though it might not be his intention, you are likely to strike first if you have your back up against the wall. At the end of the day perceived reality is reality!

So, at the day of the elections we accessed the platform and monitored the incoming reports. Though limited in many ways and often of questionable reliability, they were allowing us to capture the ambience on the ground and by taking into account the above mentioned, thereby foresee trends. For instance, Uchaguzi allows you to filter reports by category. First of all, we could identify that there were no major security incidents (except one in Mombasa), which was further corroborated by Twitter and, of course, our people on the ground. There were a lot of reports in the morning regarding minor security issues, which we on the one hand traced back to the slum areas – easily done through Uchaguzi’s mapping function –, where violence is rather common, and on the other hand to a general tension amongst the population. Accordingly, the number of incidents in the non-slum areas decreased rapidly after it became clear that the general mindset was peaceful. This was indicated by the fact that Twitter was drowned with tweets promoting peaceful elections for instance. Hence, we concluded that there most likely will be no major incidents throughout the day. Interestingly, from an ex-post analysis point of view, it would have even been possible to foresee the increase in incidents shortly before the polling stations were officially supposed to close: As it was clear that the polling stations could not handle the enormous voter turnout in due time (there were queues reaching up to a mile!), tensions rose. Once it was clear that every voter will be able to cast his ballot, inter alia twittered (!) by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, incidents decreased again.

Another issue of major concern was if there might be organized election fraud, which could have easily led to unrest. By filtering Uchaguzi for Voting Issues and Polling Station Logistical Issues, we observed an accumulation in the large polling stations, which we ascribed to organizational issues, and thus were able to rule out organized election fraud.

To sum it up: Social Media did not only serve as a great monitoring and CIM tool for our operation, but it also helped to calm down tension amongst the population. I need to stress, however, that I am only talking about the election day itself and no one knows how the situation will evolve after all the ballots are tallied or a candidate is announced winner, respectively. Because unfortunately, Social Media could also serve as a means of mobilization of unrest. After all, it was a great experience to utilize those tools for CIM and unlike the Titanic, I would be happy striking what is below the tip of the iceberg in the future!

The ICT4Peace Foundation carefully curates a collection of unique and widely acclaimed wikis geared towards the humanitarian aid community as well as media and policy makers. They feature vital information from government, the UN system in the disaster / crisis stricken area, other NGOs, the World Bank, comprehensive situation reports, mapping information and GIS data, photos, video, who/what/where information and links to domestic and international media coverage.

Each CiM wiki usually features, inter alia,

• Background information, including any UN operations
• Key UN contacts
• Key situation reports, including from UN OCHA
• A plethora of carefully curated Twitter feeds and other social media updates in English
• Videos, photos and podcasts
• Mainstream media news updates, including streams and content from Al Jazeera, New York Times, BBC, France24 and CNN.
• Discoverable and free GIS / mapping resources
• Google Maps mashups
• Ways to help IDPs and refugees

The latest wiki is on the on-going crisis in Mali. Access it here.

Member of the ICT4Peace Foundation’s Advisory Board, Egyptian digital activist, blogger, and WACC member Kamal Sedra will lead the webinar about how social media has influenced—and is influencing—the Egyptian political landscape.

Based in Cairo, Mr. Sedra founded and manages DISC Development, an organization that works in the fields of Human Rights and Freedom of Expression, and provides technical support for other civil society actors. Mr. Sedra also serves as a Senior Technical Advisor for ICT4Peace Foundation, a Swiss NGO that supports global peace through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). He is a well-known digital activist, blogger, and digital media consultant, having served as a trainer with international NGOs in numerous countries on these topics. As an expert on digital activism, Mr. Sedra has presented at conferences around the world, including the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference in San Francisco (2011), the Internet Governance Forum (2012), and many others.

In 2009 Mr. Sedra’s website www.nazaha-eg.net won the eDemocracy Forum and Politics Online prize as one of the top ten websites how changing the politics and world.

Register online for this webinar.

While 2011 was the year marked by the Arab Awakening and increasing awareness of ICTs for peace building, protection of human dignity and crisis management, in 2012 academia and think tanks started to analyse in more detail what happened and what the real contributions by ICTs in these instances were. The overall conclusion remains that ICTs has been changing how today societies function, especially in crisis, but that more research on the causality between ICTs and social and political outcomes is required. ICT4Peace has co-organized and participated in several events and processes in this field with Universities and international organisations, including the United Nations in addition to critically commenting on developments throughout the year. This role and work will need to continue in 2013.

We also continued our close cooperation with UN Chief Information Technology Officer and the UN Crisis Information Management Advisory Group (CiMAG) to support the implementation of the UN Crisis Information Management Strategy (CiMS) as part of the UN Secretary General’s overall UN ICT strategy. This Strategy is based on the recognition that the international community has time and again failed to adequately protect and support the victims of man-made or natural crises, including conflicts and natural disasters. This was and is inter alia due to the lack of willingness to share information and to inadequate Crisis Information Management Systems and capabilities, for the identification, prevention, mitigation, response and recovery of all types of crises. At the same time all UN stakeholders recognise the need for credible, accurate, complete and timely information for managing crises.

Some of the difficulties are also attributable to what has become a highly fragmented Information and Communication Technology (ICT) environment. In parallel, crisismapping, with the integration of crowd-sourced information, has radically changed the way information is collected, viewed and analysed in conjunction with other spatial and non-spatial datasets. Interests have also shifted from static maps to placing data and tools into open platforms that contain continuously updated feeds and map services. In many ways this represents a paradigm shift, whereby information management becomes a collective effort that integrates the affected population into information flows instead of a specialty managed by relatively few professional personnel. Many humanitarian organizations are curious about this new opportunity and some are using these initiatives in their programming. At the same time, other organisations may not realize that they have used new crisis maps (e.g. OpenStreetMaps or Ushahidi instances) while others are uncertain of its added value during crisis. Peacebuilding and humanitarian practitioners, often working hand in hand, and Volunteer & Technical Community (V&TC) members – now called digital humanitarians – are asking to better understand the impact of these initiatives.

For example after the Libya Crisis Map which UN OCHA stood up with the Standby Volunteer Task Force, an in-person Lessons Learned meeting was called, where the activities undertaken were reviewed in detail and resulted in over 40 lessons learned as well as the recommendation for the creation of ten thematic Communities of Interest aimed at improving collaboration between V&TCs and the traditional humanitarian community, including UN, Governments and NGOs.

These interactions grew more frequent and stronger in 2012. The ICT4Peace Foundation was proud and humbled to support a cutting-edge simulation exercise involving the newly established Digital Humanitarians Network (DHN) after ICCM 2012, held at the World Bank in Washington DC.

In line with the above, the next five years will redefine the praxis and approach to humanitarian operations in times of crisis, manmade and natural. This new combination of technology platforms, policies and field practices will change the way crisis are managed, peacebuilding operations and relief is designed and delivered.

The Foundation continued its support for UN OCHA to populate and strengthen the Humanitarian Response – Common and Operational Datasets (CODs) Registry to make critical information during a humanitarian crisis more widely available and accessible. In addition to this, the Foundation gave input and support towards the development of the Humanitarian eXchange Language (HXL) focussed on demonstrating the viability of this approach to enabling data flows within humanitarian responses and making that data available to all actors and the public. This proof of concept work focused on a core set of data of interest to all humanitarian actors: the humanitarian profile (HP), which contains estimates of the numbers and types of affected populations in a given crisis. During 2012, the UN OCHA HXL team finalized the HXL standard components needed to support HP data and built several tools for enabling partners to share this data.

The Foundation continued in 2012 the development of training courses in Crisis Information Management (CiM) for multidimensional and multi-stakeholders missions in peacekeeping and peace-building together with the Folke Bernadotte Academy, ZIF, CMI and CMC. The content of this course is anchored to new dimensions in peacekeeping and disaster management, including harnessing the potential of new media, the web, Internet and mobile technologies for increased situation awareness. The next course will be held at IPSTC in Nairobi from 23 February to 2 March 2013. ICT4Peace also lectured in training courses offered by ISCRAM and the University of Lugano Master Programme for Humanitarian Logistics as well as the Folke Bernadotte Academy.

Finally, the new and positive role that the Internet and web have been playing in recent years in developing and applying new tools to safe lives and protect human dignity might be put into question if a sustainable and resilient Internet is not assured. Cybercrime, cyberterrorism, and cyberhooliganism in particular threaten a well functioning cyberspace. In addition, the risk of a militarization of the cyberspace could lead to its fragmentation and put into question all the positive achievements for the people and societies. It was for this reason that the ICT4Peace Foundation started to look more comprehensively into the question of cybersecurity and resilience of the internet and web. ICT4Peace started to map out the instruments, processes and actors in the on-going global cyber security discussions and negotiations. It was observed, that the solutions to some of these new challenges will be generated as much by States (e.g. developing norms of State behaviour and confidence building measures (CBM’s) as by non-State actors, by building for instance new cyber security standards with the help of the new intermediaries (e.g. ISPs), business companies and consumer organisations.

Thank you for your support, encouragement and engagement. All of us from ICT4Peace wish you and your families a prosperous and healthy 2013!

Download a report of our activities from 2006 – 2012 here.

Download this update as a PDF here.

Daniel Stauffacher

ICT4Peace 2012 Year-End Report

Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA), Zentrum für Internationale Friedenseinsätze (ZIF) and ICT4Peace Foundation announce the new Crisis Information Management Training Course at the International Peace Support Training Center (IPSTC), Nairobi from 23 February to 3 March 2013. The Course will teach Information Management practices in Crisis, including Peace and Humanitarian Operations.

A special focus will be given to the use of new Media, including SMS, Twitter, crowd sourcing and crisis mapping to obtain manage and share data. This Course is also linked to the UN Crisis Information Management Strategy Implementation.

For more information, click on the image below.

Course Description
Efficient and timely provision of Shared Situational Awareness (SSA) and Crisis Information Management (CIM) are essential to enable effective decision-making in Multi-dimensional Peace Operations and are a prerequisite for effects-based operations and the comprehensive approach, founding principles of the United Nations and African Union integrated mission planning processes.

Ultimately, successful integration and coordination requires a high degree of sensitivity to the interest and operating cultures of a broad set of actors, and efficient and appropriate Information Management (IM).

The role of CIM in Peace and Humanitarian Operations is the provision of SSA and Crisis Information Management, allowing decision-makers to make accurate and appropriate decisions in crisis situations – whether humanitarian or conflict based – using information collected from a variety of military, police and civilian sources. CIM is performed by civilian, military and police peacekeeping personnel, which requires increased cooperation and coordination amongst these institutions. In addition, modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) including social media (Twitter, Facebook) and crisis mapping and crowd sourcing have become essential tools to support CIM.

This course provides an overview of CIM. The course will look at the process of CIM itself, from data collection, through data processing and analysis to information dissemination and look at the cutting-edge platforms and tools now in use, within and outside the UN system. An interactive simulation exercise will accompany the entire course and will allow participants to practice and apply the theories discussed in the different modules.

Although this course is centered on the UN system, the role that CIM can play in the process of informed decision-making and the activities that an information manager undertakes can apply to a much wider context. The course language is English.

This course was developed in cooperation with ICT4Peace, Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA), Crisis Management Center (CMC), Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), the Cairo Regional Centre for Training on Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping in Africa (CCCPA), the African Peace Support Trainers’ Association (APSTA) and ZIF.

Objectives of the Course
The CIM Training Course aims to strengthen skills, competencies and capacities of present and future CIM staff (civilian, military or police ) working in multi-dimensional peace and humanitarian operations. Participants will be able to integrate new information technology into an information management system in the crisis environment.

The Course will also demonstrate the opportunities and challenges of new ICTs and social media tools and provide reality-based simulation exercises.

Course Modules

• Introduction to Crisis Information Management
• Information Management Cycle
• Building Information Networks
• Conflict Mapping
• Integrating New Information Technology & Social Media
• Information Analysis
• Source Evaluation
• Information Protection
• Information Dissemination

Course Audience
The course is open to civilian, military, and police experts currently working or planning to work in peace or humanitarian operations or other crisis management organisations in the area of information management. The course especially targets experts working in departments of information analysis at a peace operation, with a special focus on operations in Africa.

Training Location
This training takes place at the International Peace Support Training Centre (IPSTC) in Nairobi, Kenya. For more information on the training locations selected by ZIF, please see the document in the sidebar.

Training Date
23 February (course begins at 16:00) – 2 March 2013 (course ends at 15:00)

Course Fee
€700,00 for all applicants

The course fee covers the cost for accommodation and food during the training. The course program is designed to also include informal evening events. Therefore, it is recommended to stay at the course site. The course fee will not be reduced if you choose not to stay at the official training location. Insurance and travel costs are not included in the course fee and will not be reimbursed. ZIF does not offer scholarships.

Contact
Course Coordinator and contact person on behalf of ICT4Peace Foundation, Folke Bernadotte Academy and ZIF is Brigitta von Messling, ZIF (B.vonMessling@zif-berlin.org).

Image courtesy TechChange

ICT4Peace’s Daniel Stauffacher participated in a Symposium at Harvard University (6-8 December 2012) on “Internet-Driven Developments: Structural Changes and Tipping Points”, co-hosted by the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society in Berlin, the Centre for Internet and Society Bangalore, the Center for Technology & Society at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School, KEIO University SFC, the MIT Media Lab and its Center for Civic Media, the NEXA Center for Internet & Society.

The participants deliberations centred around the following two questions:

• What are the structural shifts (as opposed to hype, fashion, or spikes), from a societal, economic, legal, and educational perspective, promoted by the Internet and related technological advancements?

• What are the tipping points and other forces that have catalysed these structural changes— including the actions of individuals (such as users, citizens, policy makers, academics, and activists) and institutions (such as government, academia, business, and civil society/advocacy organizations)?

In addition to discussing these substantive topics, the meeting served as an opportunity to talk about the vision of a networked community of international Centres of Internet and Society (“Towards a Global Network of Internet & Society Centres”). Participants were invited to scope and identify mechanisms for collaboration, research, informal coordination, and development of collective capacity.

ICT4Peace proposed and chaired a session on the positive role of ICTs in crisis management and peace building, and the new challenges to a sustainable and resilient Internet posed by emerging cyber security issues. The underlying theme of the discussion was that an open, free and sustainable internet cannot be taken for granted, and that the new and positive role, that the internet and the web have been playing in recent years in developing and applying new tools to safe lives and protect human dignity might be put into question, if a resilient internet is not assured.  All stakeholders, and in particular academia need to identify and analyse these new challenges and threats more thoroughly and describe possible solutions at national and global levels. And it is here that the great value of the proposed new Network of Centres on Internet and Society becomes apparent, because regional and cultural specificities, approaches and methods must and can be brought to bear, when doing research and education in these complex and often sensitive fields.

After a introduction and description of the positive new opportunities that e.g. social media, crowd sourcing and crisis mapping can bring to better crisis management, peace building and humanitarian operations, ICT4Peace briefly mapped out the instruments, processes and actors in the on-going global cyber security discussions and negotiations. It was observed, that the solutions to some of these new challenges will be generated as much by states (e.g. developing norms of state behaviour and confidence building measures (CBM’s) as by non-state actors, by building for instance new cyber security standards with the help of the new intermediaries (e.g. ISPs), business companies and consumer organisations.

The representatives from Keio University Japan, Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School, Rio de Janeiro, BCAC, Kenia, Faculty of Law at the Istanbul Bilgi University and ICT4Peace agreed to continue to collectively observe some of these new phenomena, with a special focus on national, regional and global, private and public governance frameworks for addressing some of these issues.

The Programme of the Symposium can be found here and the list of participants can be found here.

Daniel Stauffacher, President of ICT4Peace participated in the Fourth Xiangshan Forum (Beijing, 16 to 18 November 2012) entitled “Asia-Pacific Security: New Issues and New Ideas”.

The aim of the Forum was to provide a “high-level academic platform for leaders and senior scholars from world-renowned security-defense think tanks to exchange ideas on hot issues concerning global and Asia-Pacific security and defense, and to explore approaches to cooperation and dialogue among these think tanks”. In particular, Daniel Stauffacher was invited to co-chair a working group, called: “New Areas in Asia-Pacific Security Cooperation: Space Security and Cyber Security”. He called for improving cooperation among states to safeguard a free, open and peaceful cyberspace, increasingly challenged by cybercrime, malware, and terrorist acts using ICTs etc. In view of the increasing number of incidents of cyber-operations (e.g. Stuxnet), he informed the Forum, that the UN and some regional organizations such as the OSCE and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), have been seeking to develop and negotiate Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs) – voluntary commitments to enhance transparency concerning state-on-state action and avoid escalation of cyber incidents. He also recalled other multilateral initiatives, including the UN Group of Governmental Experts (UN GGE), the process launched at the London Conference last year (continued in Hungary 2012 and Korea in 2013) and within relevant IGOs including the ITU, OECD, APEC and NATO. He urged that states considerably increase their focus on these new security challenges and devote more resources for peaceful cooperation and for enhancing cyber-security, through political and technical means.

Amb. Paul Meyer, Senior Advisor of ICT4Peace also participated in the Forum and made an enlightening presentation of the similarities and differences of the challenges and opportunities in Space Security vs Cyber Security.

Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law together with the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and Google.org, convened a two-day workshop to advance strategic thinking on how to leverage new technologies to strengthen U.N. human rights monitoring around the world. Bringing together a small group of United Nations Human Rights Council mandate-holders, leading civil society activists, government representatives, and technologists working at the intersection of technology and human rights, the workshop developed 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 increase the awareness and impact of U.N. human rights monitoring mechanisms.

Sanjana Hattotuwa represented the ICT4Peace Foundation at this meeting. The full workshop report is now available as a PDF. You can download it here, or read it online here.

As the report avers at the end,

It was agreed that the technological expertise required to build and sustain technological platforms in support of U.N. special rapporteurs exists and that potential sources of funding could be cultivated. It will be critical, however, to identify a procurement process that enables the OHCHR to partner with innovative technologists, rather than the large firms that generally bid for U.N. contracts. For example, funding could be provided through the U.N. Foundation to support such an effort, which might create more flexibility to partner with a smaller, more innovative firm. The group also recognized that the OHCHR could draw on voluntary efforts including Coding for Social Good and the philanthropic work of Google’s engineers to identify individuals who could lend their technical expertise.

Of course, new technologies will not be a panacea to address all the challenges of increasing the efficacy of the U.N. human rights monitoring mechanisms, and they will not eliminate the need for greater financial resources and human capital to support special rapporteurs. There was consensus, however, that exciting possibilities already exist for harnessing new technologies to support the work of mandate holders, as well as a committed core of technologists and human rights activists who are willing to advance that effort.

by Paul Meyer[2]

“Jaw Jaw is better than War War” is Winston Churchill’s famous maxim concerning the desirability of dialogue over destruction in the conduct of relations between states. As a great war-time leader, it was not that Churchill was a pacifist, but he did see the merit of trying to resolve disputes first on the basis of dialogue and mutual understanding, before having recourse to armed force. As a former diplomat, I share the predisposition when faced with a new challenge to international security to look first to possibilities for conflict prevention through the application of diplomacy.

As a result, when I survey the current environment for international cyber security I am troubled by the relative dearth of preventive diplomacy and the apparent dominance of militarized approaches to achieving security in cyber space.   Given the particular nature of cyberspace, its ‘global commons’ character and its extensive and predominantly civilian applications, there are good reasons to question the assumption that it represents just another domain for armed conflict and offensive operations. Unlike the terrestrial environments that have been fields of battle for centuries, cyberspace is a recent human creation in which the key decisions as to the extent of cooperation or conflict that should prevail are still to be taken. While considerable attention has been given to criminal and other malicious actions in cyberspace by non-state actors, there has been less focus on the ‘international security’ dimension of cyberspace and the future of inter-state behaviour.

We are still at an early stage in addressing the issue of inter-state behaviour and frankly the future course of events in cyber space could go either way on the cooperation-conflict spectrum. As has frequently been the practice in the past, when the international community has been confronted with the question of how to handle a new development with implications for international security, the world has looked to the leading powers for guidance on the path to follow. Sometimes those powers have been able to cooperate to forestall militarization or weaponization of sensitive environments. One can think of the treaties on the Antarctic, outer space, the seabed and the WMD prohibition agreements such as the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention.  In other situations, weaponization was allowed to proceed, but with various limits and restrictions placed on these systems and their deployments, as witnessed by the many arms control accords of the past century.   And in yet other situations, state behaviour is unregulated formally, but reflects shared norms that have developed over time – e.g. nuclear deterrence.

In this context of international security regime development, the United States traditionally has played a leading role, often being the major architect of new arrangements and then seeking support for these from other actors. The cyber space realm has seen some initial path-breaking policy work by the U.S. in the form of its International Strategy for Cyberspace released by the White House in May 2011. This strategy recognised the tendency of some governments to seek “to exercise traditional national power through cyberspace”, while calling for the development of internationally agreed “norms for acceptable state behaviour through cyberspace”.  The Obama administration however has yet to be able to translate this progressive vision into actual processes which yield substantive results. Currently this administration is distracted by electoral considerations and is not giving thought to issues of high policy.  Critics might also protest that the administration’s apparent involvement in the deployment of the “Stuxnet” and “Flame” cyber weapons renders it a poor standard bearer for that “peaceful and just interstate conduct” in cyberspace that its strategy proclaimed.

In light of the huge stake civil society has in secure and sustainable access to cyberspace, we should not accept a laissez faire approach being taken by states with respect to international cyber security. This environment is too precious to leave it to the cyber generals (or more likely captains) to “safeguard” as they see fit. In the absence of a great power champion willing to convene a global forum on norms for responsible state behaviour on cyber security, to whom can civil society look for some action on this front?  At present there are only a few options out there that might bring some discipline and purpose to what hitherto has been a diffuse and disjointed debate.  One of these is for regional security organizations to look seriously at developing such norms and associated measures as to provide some agreed framework in which to conduct cyber operations. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has recently initiated a working group “to elaborate a set of draft confidence-building measures (CBMs) to enhance interstate cooperation, transparency, predictability and stability and to reduce the risks of misperception, escalation, and conflict that may stem from the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)”. The sizable and diverse membership of the OSCE and its successful history in the development of CBMs in the political-military field augurs well for this enterprise, but it is very early days.  The stated goal of the working group to have an initial set of CBMs ready for adoption by the upcoming OSCE Ministerial meeting in Dublin this December seems ambitious and the negotiation process may have to be extended.

At the universal level, and a central feature of cyberspace is its global nature, the United Nations has begun to address itself to the challenge of international cyber security.   It has done so largely through the establishment of a Group of Governmental Experts (drawn from a representative set of some 15 states) to consider issues relating to security in cyberspace. An initial consensus report in 2010 recommended the development of “confidence building, stability and risk reduction measures”. A new Group of Governmental Experts has got underway this year and is due to report back to the UN General

Assembly by the fall of 2013.  These groups operate on the basis of consensus however and it is by no means certain, especially as the governmental experts move beyond formulating general platitudes to grappling with specific measures, that agreed recommendations will be forthcoming.

Influencing these diplomatic processes is an underlying strategic reality, which may assist those who wish to see a cooperative security regime established for cyberspace. This reality is one common to both outer space and cyberspace.  In both of these fragile environments there is a risk that destructive action by any state has the potential to deny use of the domain to all.  One hopes that in cyberspace as in outer space, this recognition of a common vulnerability will induce a common restraint that can overtime be channelled into cooperative arrangements and collaborative habits which can form a basis for more formal agreements.

What should civil society, as cyberspace’s prime stakeholder, do to influence the state-centric activity that is finally getting underway? Firstly, concerned civil society should be monitoring closely these official processes and seeking input to them. Secondly, civil society should be maintaining pressure on governments to ensure that serious diplomatic engagement to devise the norms for responsible state behaviour is sustained. The diplomacy of international cyber security cooperation has lagged far behind the cyber actions of military establishments and it is time to energize a conflict prevention and mitigation effort in determining what sort of state conduct in cyberspace we wish to see in the future.

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 own purposes or that can be harnessed as proxies available to the highest bidder. Conflict in cyberspace could have or could lead to devastating impacts on societies globally in both the physical and the virtual senses. The origin of a disruption, the identity of a perpetrator, and the motivation can be difficult to ascertain, especially in “real time.” There is a significant risk that such difficulties of attribution and verification could lead to misunderstanding and uncontrolled escalation, leading to conflict in the “real” world.

We all share a common interest and responsibility to preserve cyberspace as a trusted, stable, interoperable and open environment that supports economic and social development for all. Enhanced international cooperation is needed to establish consensus regarding appropriate behaviour by States in cyberspace and to implement practical measures that are designed to reduce the risk of conflict and build confidence through collaborative processes that can help to ensure an environment of international cyber stability from which all can benefit. The risks have been recognised by the international community for a number of years. Various proposals have been put forward to help address them, and these are being actively debated in multiple international forums.

Much of the debate in International Security in Cyberspace has been conducted between Governments, but there is an increasing contribution being made by non-Governmental actors, including academia, business, NGOs and civil society, all who share Governments’ desire to preserve cyberspace as a trusted, stable, interoperable and open environment. The aim of the workshop was to hear from a range of voices on this issue. A cross section of speakers, each with expertise in their own particular field, has been invited to share their perspective on how concerns about the stability and security of cyberspace affect their work.”

The draft summary of comments made by Amb. Meyer can be found here and by Dr. Tikk here.

From ICT4Peace on this topic also see:

• ICT4Peace brief on upcoming Government Expert consultations on Cybersecurity (GGE) at the UN in New York
• Op-ed in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ): Disarmament Negotiations for the Cyberspace are needed
• Getting down to business: Realistic goals for the promotion of peace in cyber-space
• Reconciling Westphalia and Cyberspace: ICT and Security Developments Between 1969 and 2012
• ICT4Peace Foundation calls for an International Code of Conduct on Cyber-Conflict