3.4. Multistakeholder efforts

🎯 What is the value of multistakeholder discussions for cyber diplomacy efforts?

🎯 Which are the most relevant multistakeholder fora that African states should be engaged with?

3.4.1. Internet Governance Forum

The UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a non-decision-making forum that involves a variety of stakeholders to openly discuss internet governance issues, including security and privacy. While the IGF does not make decisions or recommendations, it provides the opportunity for open dialogue and partnership, the exchange of information, and useful voluntary policy guidance through the Best Practice Forum (BPF) on Cybersecurity, the Dynamic Coalition (DC) on Internet Standards, Security and Safety (DC-ISSS), and reports from the thematic sessions held each year. In addition, the secretary general’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation envisages a strengthened role for the IGF (the so-called IGF+) in global digital cooperation and the establishment of a high-level multistakeholder body within the IGF, which will work on translating discussions into impact, increasing the importance of the IGF for coordinated discussions on cybersecurity.

3.4.2. The GFCE

The Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE) is a platform joined by 60 countries and many international and regional organisations, companies, and civil society organisations to collaborate on capacity building in cybersecurity. The Delhi Communiqué on a GFCE Global Agenda for Cyber Capacity Building, adopted in 2017, set several priority areas for global capacity building and enabled the GFCE to create corresponding thematic working groups for the cooperation of its members and partners. These priority areas include developing national frameworks, incident response and protection of the CI, combating cybercrime, and developing cybersecurity culture and skills. In addition, the GFCE aims to establish a ‘clearing house mechanism’ to enable its members to get any support needed from other members. To map its work and available global knowledge, resources, and capacity-building activities in the field of cybersecurity, the GFCE launched its CyBil knowledge portal.

3.4.3. Paris Call

Together with the French government, Microsoft launched the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, a high-level declaration on the development of common principles for securing cyberspace. The Paris Call was signed by over 80 countries and over 1000 businesses and organisations worldwide. The Call affirmed the importance of voluntary norms of responsible state behaviour to cybersecurity, drawing on the 2015 GGE norms and the GCSC norms.

3.4.4. The GCSC

The Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC), a multistakeholder think tank established in 2015, proposed a set of new norms for consideration by various forums, such as the GGE. The proposals include the Call to Protect the Public Core of the Internet, a Call to Protect Electoral Infrastructure, and the Singapore Package of six norms that ask states to avoid tampering with products, to create vulnerability equities processes and mitigate significant vulnerabilities, to enhance cyber hygiene, and to abstain from using botnets or driving offensive operations through non-state actors. These norms are intended to be complementary to norms developed within the context of the UN.

3.4.5. The FOC

Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) works on raising the profile of human rights as an integral consideration in cybersecurity policymaking. The FOC has issued a Joint Statement on a Human Rights Based Approach to Cybersecurity Policy Making, and provided a definition of cybersecurity as ‘the preservation – through policy, technology, and education – of the availability, confidentiality and integrity of information and its underlying infrastructure so as to enhance the security of persons both online and offline.’