The UN: Defining Cyber Rules of the Road?
On February 9th, 2021, the Washington Foreign Law Society hosted the first instalment of its new virtual series on tech policy, "Cyber Accountability – Who did it? Is it wrong? Can they be stopped?", jointly organized with the Stimson Center, a Washington DC-based think tank focusing on international security issues. The event was moderated by Ms. Debra Decker of the Stimson Center and featured Mr. Bassem Hassan (Counsellor, Permanent Mission of Egypt to the United Nations) and Mr. Robert M. Young (Legal Counsel, Criminal, Security and Diplomatic Law Division, Global Affairs Canada).
In the first discussion of the series, panelists looked at initiatives taken by States through the United Nations to encourage the development of a common understanding of international legal obligations, as well as voluntary standards or norms representative of responsible State cyber behavior.
Sources mentioned throughout the program include the following:
History of First Committee efforts, including links to current work: Information and communications technology (ICT) (reachingcriticalwill.org)
The UN’s Institute for Disarmament Research: An older report on the First Committee’s approach to narrowing the focus of its work. The report was written before information operations became such a major issue with the leveraging of social media https://www.unidir.org/files/publications/pdfs/report-of-the-international-security-cyber-issues-workshop-series-en-656.pdf
Cyber policy portal that details the published policies of States and some organizations such as NATO. https://unidir.org/cpp/en/
OEWG: https://www.un.org/disarmament/open-ended-working-group/
Proposals for Programme of Action: joint-contribution-poa-future-of-cyber-discussions-at-un-10-08-2020.pdf (un-arm.org) and Egypt-Working-Paper-OEWG-ICTs1.pdf (unoda-web.s3.amazonaws.com)
The Washington Foreign Law Society wishes to thank Ms. Decker for moderating the panel, and Mr. Hassan and Mr. Young for their remarks and thought-provoking comments.
Stay tuned the next instalment of our series on Cyber Accountability!
