How can we address the accountability of civilian hackers and cyber mercenaries in modern conflicts? The rise of volunteer cyber participants in the Ukrainian conflict reveals significant gaps in the legal and ethical standards. This opinion piece argues that existing international laws are inadequate for managing the complex roles of these actors and calls for urgent reform. By examining the …
Limiting Internet Blackouts Crucial to Peace and Security in Africa
Defining a firm framework on internet access during conflicts should become an important agenda to finding answers to the challenges of peace and security in Africa. The region continues to face several armed conflicts and waves of military coups. If the African Union is to meet its aspiration to ‘Silence the Guns,’ then, citizens’ rights to internet during conflicts should …
How African States Can Promote the Common African Position on the Applicability of International Law in the OEWG
African member states have made up approximately 30% of speakers during the substantive sessions of the Open-Ended Working Group on Security of and in the Use of Information and Communication Technologies (OEWG). African states are also among those most vulnerable to malicious ICT activities, which have potential to affect some of the region’s biggest economies. In a 2023 ranking of …
Safeguarding Democracy: Tackling AI-Generated Deepfakes in Elections
This contribution discusses the challenges posed by AI-generated deepfakes in elections and the efforts being made to combat them, in particular the need for collective action and collaboration among governments, civil society, and industry to safeguard democracy in the face of rapidly advancing technology. 2024 is an extraordinary year for both democracy and technology. More countries and people will participate …
Striking the Right Balance: How to Publicly Attribute a Cyber Operation to Another State
In recent years, publicly attributing the authorship of malicious cyber operations to another state has become an increasingly popular policy response for many states. Given the political attention these official public political attributions receive, it is vital for states to reasonably explain and justify the reasoning behind particular public attributions. In striking a balance between disclosing and strategically withholding information, …
Advancing European Cyber Resilience and Cyber Defence
Since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the attention of European security policymakers has shifted back to conventional defence and warfare. However, it would be short-sighted to ignore the growing peacetime cyber threat and the technological demands of modern warfare, especially in the context of the military use of AI and other emerging technologies with potentially profound …
Countering Cyber Mercenaries
The EU and its member states face a human rights and security crisis due to the use of cyber mercenaries, private entities that sell offensive cyber capabilities to governments. The Paris Peace Forum, the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, and a Franco-British initiative are some of the platforms that have proposed concrete actions and guidance for industry, …
The Global Digital Compact: Progress Towards Digital Cooperation
This article recaps the genesis and evolution of the Global Digital Compact, an ambitious initiative born out of the United Nations’ 75th anniversary declaration. Against the reality of escalating global tensions, the 2020 declaration emphasised the urgency of upholding the organisation’s founding principles. The proposed Compact represents a response to the challenges posed by digital technologies, which both offer immense …
Why EU Cyber Policy Should Become Feminist
The EU’s cyber policy and strategy has developed essential relevance to the EU’s security environment. This was highlighted in 2022’s Strategic Compass, which emphasises the importance of cybersecurity. In the grey zone between peace and armed conflict, state and non-state actors use cyber operations for espionage, ransom or sabotage. The 2022 ENISA Threat Landscape found a massive increase in cyberattacks …
Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure: A Quick Win for Cyber Norms and Software Security
In 2015, UN member states committed themselves to fostering software supply chain security. But the issue has since been neglected in international forums, even as software supply chain compromises have severely impacted individuals, companies and societies. To begin to close this implementation gap, diplomatic action should focus on global promotion of processes of coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD). This would both …