Informal consultations of the OEWG Chair with stakeholders

Event report

Over 100 organisations, companies, and groups participated in an informal online consultative meeting with the OEWG chair. Unfortunately, the allocated 90 minutes allowed for only a few more than 30 out of 53 applied entities to briefly provide their contributions, and the chair was invited to allocate more time in future. Almost all the contributions supported the call for a greater involvement of stakeholders in the work of the OEWG made by Let’s Talk Cyber and a number of states and organisations, and for a more transparent procedure for accrediting the interested parties to contribute.

Some of the proposals which directly reflected on the OEWG agenda items include:

Emerging risks:

• recognising vulnerability exploitation among grave emerging threats;
• recognising grave risks from growing cyber capabilities of states, and involvement of cyber mercenaries and proxy actors in cyberattacks;

International law, cyber-norms, CBMs, and capacity building:

• using the long-standing principles of international law;
• examining prohibitions of interventions; 
• inviting states for non-attacking the electoral infrastructure, and protecting the public core of the internet;
• enhancing the processes related to vulnerability disclosure;
• increasing collaboration among states, businesses, and other communities to reduce vulnerabilities;
• establishing cross-border incident response mechanisms; 
• establishing a handbook of good practices of states and other stakeholders, where a template for national assessment can be of great value;
• addressing monopolies of some tech companies; 
• taking into consideration regional experiences, like norms implementation across the Southeast Asia, and regional CB platforms with agreed curriculum and training modalities;
• gathering inputs of stakeholders on national levels;
• assisting governments in advancing norms on local levels, based on the local knowledge and awareness;
• avoiding duplication of work, especially in capacity building, in order to save resources;

Cross-cutting aspects:

• integrating human right principles into cybersecurity debates, and addressing gender issues;
• introducing a human-centric approach to cyberspace issues, example being the protection of victims of cyberattacks;
• enhancing research work, including through grants to support cybersecurity research; 

Institutional dialogue and cooperation:

• further shaping the Programme of Action proposal to improve frequency of meetings and the review process;
• a greater utilisation of UN IGF dialogue and intersession processes (like Best Practice Forum and the Dynamic Coalitions) for the implementation of norms.