"The conference brought together junior and senior scholars and practitioners from government and industry to discuss what responsible behaviour in cyberspace is and if and how different actors can be persuaded to behave responsibly.

The need to formulate rules of the road for state behaviour in Cyberspace has been felt for a long time and found a place in the UN system ever since Russia tabled the first proposal  for a UN resolution on ICTs in the context of international security in 1998. In terms of substance, this put the issue firmly in the context of possible conflict between states. In terms of process, it led to various rounds of so called UN Groups of Governmental Experts (UN GGEs) – as Western states did not want to go down the rabbit hole of negotiating a formal treaty – seeking consensus on acceptable interstate behaviour. After a number of successful rounds, especially the 2013 and 2015 consensus reports, the fifth iteration of the UN GGE process failed to produce a consensus report in 2017. That also landed the international cyber diplomatic community in a period of  soul searching: how and where do we continue the ‘norms process’?

In the meantime, scholars have been working on analysing various aspects of interstate behaviour and norms  in cyberspace and some of them were our guests in The Hague..." Continue reading at the Leiden Safety & Security blog.

‍