Gendering Cybersecurity through Women, Peace and Security: Gender and Human Rights in National-level Approaches to Cybersecurity
A project by the ICT4Peace Foundation and the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP) with the support of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Authors
Panthea Pourmalek, Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP)
The key findings of the report addressed the following questions:
- How can the WPS agenda be applied to improve cybersecurity?
- What are gender approaches to cyberthreat assessments and cybersecurity provision?
- What should conflict-sensitive cybersecurity policies look like and what area additional challenges posed in conflict-affected contexts?
- How can we use synergies between National Cybersecurity Strategies and WPS National Action Plans?
Executive Summary
There is a growing awareness on the multilateral level of the need to integrate a gender perspective into international cybersecurity. State, and civil society actors have called for this purpose to apply the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), along with international frameworks and conventions on gender equality. However, there is less attention to the implications of the WPS and other international frameworks for formulating national policies.
The report addresses this gap by analyzing the integration or non-integration of gender and women’s rights in National Cyber Security Strategies (NCS) and how cybersecurity concerns are reflected or not reflected in National Action Plans (NAPs) on WPS and other relevant women’s rights and gender equality policy instruments.
Employing a WPS lens, it further explores a need for conflict-sensitive approaches to cybersecurity and the risks faced by conflict-affected populations and women peacebuilders.
Based on the analysis conducted, the report recommends the following to improve the gender sensitivity of national-level approaches to cybersecurity:
Improve advocacy and governance by setting strategic priorities:
- Expand the definition of cybersecurity to include a human-centric approach that stresses a human rights perspective;
- Raise the profile of gender issues by including a pledge to mainstream gender in national cybersecurity;
- Emphasize a ‘do no harm’ approach to cybersecurity proliferation to prevent unintended negative consequences of cybersecurity state interventions;
- Improve advocacy on human-centric and gender-sensitive approaches to cybersecurity at national and international levels.
Improve stakeholder engagement through better cooperation, coordination, and inclusivity:
- Employ a multistakeholder, inclusive, and participatory approach in the creation of national cybersecurity strategies;
- Determine cybersecurity needs as part of the NAP creation process;
- Align and coordinate cybersecurity-related work across government agencies and departments;
- Maintain a multi-stakeholder accountability mechanism to improve oversight and accountability, convene stakeholders in an ongoing manner to review and update;
- national legal and regulatory frameworks, and oversee their implementation.
Improve capacity-building and awareness-raising around cybersecurity and gender, from local to institutional levels:
- Strengthen capacity of actors designing and implementing cybersecurity policies;
- Improve cybersecurity literacy within the whole of society by conducting awareness-raising campaigns on gendered cyber threats, providing recommendations on cybersecurity hygiene strategies for women and other vulnerable groups, and providing information on digital rights and channels for reporting cyber incidents, and contact points for legal remedy mechanisms.
- Address cross-sectoral cybersecurity resource inequalities;
- Ensure meaningful inclusion of a gender perspective into cybersecurity and technology design beyond the participation level.
Improve research and knowledge production on the intersections of gender and cybersecurity, and recognize and build expertise:
- Recognize and draw on grassroots expertise of women and women’s rights organizations and consider the role of citizens as active contributors to the assessment of cyber threats as well as the design and implementation of cybersecurity capacity-building and programming.
- Commission research to further analyze and report the gendered dimension of cybersecurity that addresses the gendered impacts of cyber incidents and gendered cybersecurity needs, barriers women and other marginalized groups face in accessing national cybersecurity policymaking processes, legal remedies related to cyber harms, information about their digital human rights, and cybersecurity emergency support.
- Collect and maintain gender and intersectional disaggregated data on both the creation and implementation of cybersecurity policies and programs.
Rewatch the report launch event here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQp0zLq61dQ&ab_channel=GNWP
Read the full report here on ICT4Peace
And here on the GNWP website
