UN Government Group of Experts on Cybersecurity

By Maya Plentz

United Nations, 27th February 2020

The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), organized a talk with Ambassador Guilherme de Aguiar Patriota, the current Chair of the Government Group of Experts (GGE), and Ambassador Jürg Lauber, Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the UN, who leads the multi-stakeholder Open Ended Working Group (OEWG), to discuss issues of cybersecurity, more precisely the norms of responsible State behavior in cyberspace.

With the OEWG, the UN has opened the discussions to actors in the private sector and NGOs, to share industry expertise. The Government Group of Experts is composed of 25 state-members, only governments are allowed, and they will be presenting a report in 2021.

The OEWG is more inclusive and focuses primarily on issues of ransomware attacks and other cybercrime activities that are so called "below the threshold of what would be called cyber warfare, where International Humanitarian Law".

The discussion was modera…