There are important points of intersection with militarism and traditional arms proliferation: for example, the dark web facilitates illicit arms trafficking while certain other technologies raise concerns related to surveillance and intelligence gathering. The vulnerability of certain existing weapon systems—notably nuclear weapons, uncrewed aerial vehicles (drones), and potentially autonomous weapons, if developed—to digital attack present new areas of alarm, but also compelling incentives to disarm.

The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the substantial role that ICTs play in multiple dimensions of our lives, which underscores both their ubiquity and the importance of meaningful access to ICTs. Yet cybercrime has, according to some estimates, increased by up to 600 per cent since the start of the pandemic. Multiple digital operations targeting medical facilities worldwide seek to undermine responses to the health crisis, spread misinformation, or exploit our current increased reliance on digital connectivity. Some governments are instituting digital contact tracing applications that raise concerns about privacy, surveillance, and human rights; while online gender-based violence, including surveillance, has increased, and the gender digital divide has become more blatant. Reports of hostile operations against critical infrastructure have increased in this time of uncertainty and instability and more states are adopting offensive cyber strategies and integration with military doctrines. 

WILPF is increasingly concerned by the militarisation of cyber space and supportive of solutions that move us closer to cyber peace and beyond seeking stability. The concept of cyber peace is evolving and being defined in different ways.  Some have noted that it is more than the mere absence of conflict and must be grounded in a concept of positive peace that eliminates structural forms of violence; while others have explored how cybersecurity due diligence, global commons regimes such as those for the sea or outer space, and bilateral investment treaties can form the basis of a cyber peace approach. WILPF believes that the pursuit of cyber peace necessitates processes that will understand cyber space on its own terms and consider its specific characteristics, including its overwhelmingly civilian nature, by avoiding an approach that imports concepts from traditional disarmament and arms control. WILPF recommends that the humanitarian and human rights impact of cyber operations be a guiding principle and central to multilateral discussions of cyber peace and security rather than being treated as a secondary after-thought to national security concerns.

WILPF believes that existing international law, including international human rights law and international humanitarian law applies to activities in cyber space provides a shared baseline. But this should not be taken to mean that the existing legal framework is sufficient. In fact, the current framework can be seen as a patchwork in which differing interpretations and understandings of key concepts and actions have created an easily exploitable vacuum, in which problematic emerging practice risks become the norm. WILPF recommends steps that reduce the motivation to pursue aggressive cyber capabilities, such as through positive obligations or actions, and encourages efforts to break through playing politics on this issue. Inclusivity and transparency are imperative.