Free Trade

For some years, experts have cautioned that the more humanitarian organizations collect data, the more they ‘are exposed to a growing wave of digital attacks and cyber espionage, and have become highly prized targets’. In late January 2020, the issue made headlines: The New Humanitarian reported a ‘sophisticated’ cyber operation against the UN, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. While it remains unclear what type of data was affected, the incident underlines that in today’s world, no organization – national, intergovernmental or humanitarian – can consider itself safe from hostile cyber operations. For humanitarian organizations, like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), digitalization, strengthening cyber security systems and capabilities, and data protection are priorities (see here, orientation 5). And for a lawyer like myself, it raises the question of what international humanitarian law (IHL) has to say about ‘hacking humanitarians’? Of course, international humanitarian law (IHL) is only one piece of the puzzle. This post is…