States’ International Cyber-operations: Child Rights Impacts and Obligations
A legal literature review
About
International cyber operations are already impacting children. Risks are likely to rise. There are empirical gaps around these risks—but the normative issues are equally understudied.
This paper aims to identify some of the legal controversies pertaining to the impact of states’ international cyber-operations (SICOs) on children and their rights. It provides a review of relevant sources and highlights areas in need of further study.
The paper addresses what is at stake, why the topic has increasing salience, and how the legal literature relating to international cyber-operations has largely ignored the risks for children and the domain of international child rights’ law. Based on a comprehensive literature review, it introduces a framework for identifying and pursuing issues of importance in the three sections that follow, labelled ‘Respect’, and ‘Protect’ and ‘Fulfil’.
- The ‘Respect’ section poses legal questions about obligations not to harm, surveil, interfere in the protection of or otherwise violate the rights of children through SICOs.
- The ‘Protect’ section problematizes actions that may facilitate child participation in SICOs. A companion article, co-authored with Cécile Aptel, discusses those issues in further detail.
- The ‘Fulfil’ section addresses issues of individual accountability for violations of child rights through SICOs.
The paper thus aims to offer a structured legal research programme to be further conducted to address child rights in the context of SICOs.
The research approach is disclosed, as fully as possible, through the associated methodology document and its annexes. A separate list of bibliographic resources is provided as a research resource.
