In December 2018, the General Assembly established another UN GGE on Cybersecurity and for the first time a UN Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on the same topic. ICT4Peace recently published a speech by Daniel Stauffacher in Jeju on “how to live with two UN processes on cybersecurity”, describing the background that led to this decision of the UN General Assembly, and suggested a possible division of labour between the two processes.
The new UN GGE will hold its first meeting in December 2019 and is to submit its final report to the General Assembly in 2021. The mandate also includes consultations on the subject to be held with regional organizations, such as the African Union, the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Regional Forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Dr. Eneken Tikk, Senior Advisor, ICT4Peace Foundation and Dr. Daniel Stauffacher participated in the EU – UN GGE Regional Consultations in Brussels in a meeting with the research community and civil society representatives. The background note for this meeting can be found here.
In the discussion Daniel Stauffacher suggested inter alia, that the next UN GGE could consider to make a link between the agreed GGE norms and CBMs and and how they are being implemented at the country and regional levels. He expressed his hope, that the next UN GGE would enhance its dialogue with the private sector and civil society and make concrete suggestions on how cybersecurity capacity building, especially for developing countries, could be scaled up, and integrated in the programmes of the traditional bilateral and multilateral development cooperation agencies.
Finally, he stressed the need for a discussion, maybe in the context of the OEWG, on how to develop policies that consider more the individual as the epicenter of the security challenge instead of only traditional territorial sovereignty. Human beings need to be the core focus of the IT and security agenda going forward. For that discussion he introduced the ICT4Peace Paper, written by Barbara Weekes, Senior Advisor, ICT4Peace Foundation, called: “Digital Human Security 2020 – Human security in the age of AI: Securing and empowering individuals“. The Paper can be found here.
ICT4peace experts have been promoting and supporting international cybersecurity consultations and negotiations since 2007. A list of its activities can be found here.