In preparation of the next Round of negotiations on Cybersecurity by the UN Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) (A/RES/73/27) and by the UN Governmental Group of Experts (UN GGE) (A/RES/73/266) from 2 to 16 December 2019, ICT4Peace in cooperation with and support of the Swiss Government, the Office of Disarmament Affairs (ODA) and the African Union on 27 November 2019 conducted its Cybersecurity Policy and Diplomacy preparatory Workshop with African Diplomats serving at the UN in New York. The speakers and the Moderator
Dr. Gillian Goh, UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (ODA), Discussion of UN OEWG and UN GGE and other international processes and the engagement of African States, presentation of the ODA online Cybersecurity training course.
Dr. Sherif Hashem, SUNY University delivered an introduction to the landscape of cyber-operations and their cost: The role of Governments and private sector in prevention, mitigation and resilience, attribution and national and regional capacity for achieving cybersecurity.
Nele Achten, Exeter University and Harvard Law School, explained the role of the International Law and Voluntary Non-Binding Norms to Achieve International Cybersecurity,
Véronique Christory, ICRC New York presented the relationship between IHL and cyber operations during armed conflicts and the potential human cost of cyber operations, and
Dr. Daniel Stauffacher, ICT4Peace Foundation, was the moderator of the workshop and gave an introduction to the ICT4Peace Cybersecurity Matrix of national and international goals and measures of Cybersecurity, including regional and global processes.
Daniel Stauffacher also presented ICT4Peace’s Call to Governments: Critical Infrastructure and Offensive Cyber Operations.
He also referred to the ICT4Peace submission to the OEWG negotiations in early September in New York.
Previously this year, ICT4Peace had also been invited by the Organisation of American States (OAS) to conduct on 12 August 2019 its one day workshop on cybersecurity policy and diplomacy called: „Cyber Diplomacy in the UN Process“. The Program of that workshop can be found here.
ICT4Peace is proud to be able to look back on a close and fruitful cooperation with OAS in the field of Cybersecurity Capacity Building. The very first workshop of the ICT4Peace Capacity Building Program was held in Bogota 2014 in cooperation with OAS.
A note on the ICT4Peace Cybersecurity and Diplomacy capacity building program can be found here.
ICT4Peace has also contributed the EU Regional Consultations on the UN GGE process.
ICT4Peace has written about and contributed to the work of the UN GGE over many years, some posts on our activities can be found here.
In cooperation with the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (ODA) ICT4Peace published the first Commentary on the norms developed by the previous UN GGE Meetings.
