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1. The Impact of Stereotyping on International Cyber Norm‑making: Navigating Misperceptions and Building Trust

Author:
Fan Yang
Publication Date:
02-2025
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
Over the past three decades, cyberspace – a digital realm shaped by both technological and social dynamics – has evolved into a domain where a wide range of human activities now take place. These activities are marked by their anonymity, which complicates attribution, and their instantaneity, which challenges timely regulation. To address these challenges, states focus on two approaches: applying existing laws and creating new ones. While there is a general consensus that cyberspace should be governed by the rule of law, including international law, the application of existing legal frameworks to cyberspace remains an evolving challenge both in terms of state practice and academic discourse. At the same time, the international community has consistently sought to develop new norms to promote good governance in cyberspace. Against this backdrop, states – especially those with advanced cyber capabilities – are engaging in a competitive game of norm-making, striving to exert influence in shaping international rules to govern cyberspace. As part of this process, states often categorise each other by trying to highlight their counterparts’ most distinct characteristics. While such labelling is common in diplomatic interactions, it is particularly problematic in the context of international cyber norm-making. Labels reflect and reinforce stereotypes, which often oversimplify the complexities of states’ behavioural patterns in cyberspace and their underlying logic. States are thus roughly grouped by opposing indicators, such as those viewing cyberspace as a global commons versus sovereign territory, those advocating for an interconnected free Internet versus a fragmented “splinternet”, or those favouring multistakeholderism versus multilateralism as the dominant approach to the governance of cyberspace. Once established, these stereotypes are difficult to dismantle and can lead to distorted perceptions that obstruct constructive dialogue. This GCSP Policy Brief aims to identify the potential security challenges posed by stereotyping in international cyber norm-making processes. It then illustrates the policy implications of this problem and offers policy recommendations.
Topic:
Security, Cybersecurity, Norms, Cyberspace, and Trust
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. The Biological Weapons Convention: Challenges and Opportunities

Author:
Jaroslav Krasny
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
Amid geopolitical challenges that have led to the weakening of international arms control and disarmament efforts, the Ninth Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Review Conference (RevCon) provided a “glimmer of hope” for control and disarmament regimes. Delegates at the Non-Proliferation Treaty RevCon in 2022 and the Chemical Weapons Convention RevCon in 2023 were unable to reach a consensus on these conferences’ respective final documents. By contrast, the Ninth BWC RevCon held from 28 November to 16 December 2022 successfully adopted the final document. While conflicting positions on how to reflect recent allegations that some states are undertaking biological-weaponsrelated research prevented agreement on the article-by-article review, the final document included a forward-looking section that established a Working Group on the Strengthening of the BWC. This Working Group is designed to “strengthen the effectiveness and to improve the implementation of the Convention” and generate recommendations for enhancing and institutionalising it across a number of important areas, including confidence-building measures (CBMs), transparency, compliance and verification, and the national implementation of the BWC. The Working Group's sessions, therefore, provide a long-awaited opportunity to address several critical issues related to the Convention, including international cooperation and a verification mechanism. The Working Group also presents a valuable opportunity to advance work on national implementation under Article IV and interlink obligations. The recent convening of the Working Group from 4 to 8 December 2023 and the subsequent meeting of states parties from 11 to 13 December offer pertinent insights into progress made in strengthening the BWC. Ahead of the next session of the Working Group scheduled for August 2024, this Policy Brief seeks to outline some of the security challenges presented by biological weapons and lay out some of the policy implications and recommendations that flow from these challenges.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, International Cooperation, Geopolitics, and Biological Weapons
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Strengthening a Rights-Based Approach to United Nations Peace Operations

Author:
Charles T. Hunt and Adam Day
Publication Date:
02-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
During a July 2020 open debate the United Nations (UN) Security Council highlighted the crucial roles human rights play in peace operations, including by providing early warning of issues or problems, supporting good offices, improving the protection of civilians, strengthening national rule-of-law capacities, ensuring due diligence/compliance for military operations, leading a range of protection-related activities and supporting efforts to protect political space in fragile settings. Despite this recognition of the important role of human rights, there has been relatively little research into how human rights support the implementation of the mandates of a range of peace operations, leaving the evidence base for understanding the contribution of human rights to peace operations very thin. The purpose of this policy brief is to chart out key complexities linked to operationalising a rights-based approach to peace operations. It identifies and introduces critical challenges to mandate implementation through specific themes, including the contribution of human rights to the protection of civilians, stabilisation mandates, smaller-footprint field offices, the political work of special envoys and mission transitions. The paper examines both theoretical and operational aspects of human rights in peace operations. In line with the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations report (2015), it discusses human rights considerations in relation to a range of UN peace operations, including peacekeeping and special political missions, regional prevention offices, and special envoys. The first section locates human rights components and concerns across a spectrum of UN peace operations, comparing how human rights contribute to a wide range of peace and security engagements. The second section highlights several challenges to realising human rights aims and objectives in field missions. The final section proposes a series of questions that warrant further discussion to elucidate and support a rights-based approach to peace operations that could help to respond to the call in the New Agenda for Peace for a reflection on the limits and future of UN peacekeeping and other ongoing policymaking within the UN system. The paper illustrates that in order to support the UN’s recommitment to its core principles and human rights pillar, there is a need for greater attention to the ways that human rights can support the analysis and strategic positioning of UN peace operations.
Topic:
United Nations, Peacekeeping, and UN Security Council
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Geopolitical Features, Common Interests and the Climate Crisis: The Case of the Arctic

Author:
Lassi Heininen
Publication Date:
05-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
In the 1990s an inspiring sense of a “new North” became apparent in Arcticrelated ideas and innovations that indicated the end of the Cold War period. This included arms control initiatives, cross-border cooperation and sustainability “to decrease military tension and increase political stability”, an emerging environmental awakening among peoples and societies, knowledge-building by indigenous peoples and the scientific community, and new forums for opening up discussions on regional development. The Arctic seemed to be in a state of constant transformation (geo)politically, economically, culturally and environmentally. Some of the outcomes of these processes were impressive, transforming the Arctic from a site of military tension to one reflecting geopolitical stability. When analysing this transformation and the ways in which the Arctic states reconstructed their geopolitical reality prior to 24 February 2022, the main conclusion is that this would not have been possible without key features of Arctic geopolitics, security and governance creating suitable conditions for cross-border cooperation, which correspondingly increased stability. In the same way, cooperation, mostly in terms of fields of low political interest, was made possible because the eight Arctic states shared similar interests. But now this transformation, which is also called the “Arctic model”, is threatened by a new transformation from a state of high geopolitical stability to one characterised by the uncertainties of the climate crisis and new East-West tensions, resulting in a pause in pan-Arctic cooperation during which the Arctic Council has not been able to return to business as usual. The focus of this Geneva Paper, based on the author’s previous studies and personal observations after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, is this new transformation and its influences on cooperation. The aim is to assess whether the fundamentals of the previously applicable common interests are still valued, and to what extent they could be used as the means for confidence-building in the region. Similarly, if the fundamentals of the special features of Arctic geopolitics, security and governance are in place, the question then becomes to what extent they could be interpreted as prerequisites for more widespread cooperation and geopolitical stability. Finally, if the search for stability that was the original ultimate aim of the Arctic states and Arctic indigenous peoples were still valued, would it motivate the Arctic states’ governments to more effectively align their policies when facing the climate crisis. This could be done by integrating cooperation on environmental protection, climate change mitigation, and science into their climate and foreign policies. Much is clearly at stake, for if we lose the region’s human-made peace dividend that was consciously built during the 35 years before February 2022, then the multiple crises and world disorder that are looming and threatening the entire world community would be much more difficult to resolve.
Topic:
Climate Change, International Cooperation, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Arctic and Global Focus

5. The Future of Neutrality

Author:
Pascal Lottaz
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
Neutrality is a naturally occurring phenomenon. There have always been actors on the world stage that have remained outside the conflicts of others, be they countries, religious institutions or international organisations (IOs). Even during the two world wars and the first Cold War (i.e. the US and its allies versus the USSR and its allies), some actors managed to avoid the battlefields or claimed a position separate from the various alliance systems. Despite the beliefs of some commentators that neutrality is coming to an end, there is no indication that world politics is actually about to change dramatically enough to eradicate the reasons and logic for neutrality. In fact, the least conductive international environment for neutrality – unipolarity – seems to be ending. What could be called the “New Cold War” (the West-aligned countries versus Russia in Europe and versus China in Asia) and the emerging multipolar world will likely produce the dynamics leading to more neutrality as a counter-reaction to the new great power rivalry. We should expect neutrality and neutralism – i.e. political movements demanding the adoption of neutrality policies – to strengthen. Nevertheless, neutrality is shifting. It is moving from Europe to other regions of the world, and, in the process, will likely also change conceptually. This Policy Brief will first describe the nature of neutrality and the three basic motivations for actors to opt for its policies. It then discusses the challenges any neutrality policy faces and will conclude by providing concrete recommendations for policymakers seeking to maintain neutrality vis-à-vis either hot or cold conflicts.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Hegemony, Rivalry, and Neutrality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Sanctions against North Korea: From the UN Security Council to a Coalition of the Willing?

Author:
Eric J. Ballbach
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
Since the breakdown in 2019 of high-level diplomacy with North Korea (officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK) and as a result of the fiveyear military modernisation plan that the country announced in January 2021, it has steadily expanded its military capabilities. It has not only conducted an unprecedent number of missile tests and in the process introduced a range of new missile technologies, but recently also introduced a new law that makes significant changes to its nuclear doctrine. At the same time, the rapidly changing geopolitical context, most vividly exemplified by the intensifying US-China rivalry and Russia’s war against Ukraine, not only makes a resolution of the international community’s conflict with North Korea over its nuclear weapons and military capabilities even less likely, but strains the central mechanism used by the international community to deal with North Korea during the past years, i.e. the imposition of sanctions through the UN Security Council (UNSC). Despite the unprecedented quantitative and qualitative progress in North Korea’s military build-up, the UNSC has imposed no new sanctions on the country since 2017. This Policy Brief examines why and how the UNSC stopped being the central theatre for imposing sanctions on North Korea and highlights the security challenges that result from this shift. Next, it addresses the most crucial implications of these security challenges. The analysis includes a discussion of the central actors driving new decisions to impose sanctions on North Korea outside the framework of the UNSC, and how these sanctions target one of the country’s most crucial sanctions-evasion mechanisms: its cybercrime programme. Based on this analysis, the brief offers policy recommendations that underscore the value of recent coordination initiatives in the field of sanctions and discusses what more needs to be done.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, Sanctions, Geopolitics, and UN Security Council
Political Geography:
North Korea and Global Focus

7. Reimagining Peace through the Women, Peace and Security Agenda

Author:
Fleur Heyworth
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
By Ms Fleur Heyworth , Head of Gender and Inclusive Security Introduction The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s recent annual report on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) stated that the world is “experiencing a reversal of generational gains in women’s rights while violent conflicts, military expenditures, military coups, displacements and hunger continue to increase”. In July 2023 the Secretary-General released a policy brief entitled A New Agenda for Peace (NA4P) in support of his Our Common Agenda report and the Summit of the Future due to take place in 2024. Both place the rights and full participation of women and girls at the centre of a more peaceful and sustainable world; indeed, evidence repeatedly proves that more gender-equitable societies are inherently more peaceful and less prone to violence. Yet tensions around the normative status of the WPS Agenda remain that are symbolic of the tensions at the heart of our multilateral system more broadly and divisions over the future vision and priorities for our collective security. The NA4P integrates a feminist perspective by making bold calls for the dismantling of oppressive structures, particularly the patriarchy, and a transformation of power, yet its recommendations are not new and would not be sufficient to transform power structures. This GCSP Policy Brief analyses the security challenges of today and what we can learn from the achievements and shortcomings of the WPS Agenda, in particular the recent (and current) intentional and unintentional backsliding. It then looks at potential areas for innovation and the strengthening of the WPS Agenda in support of the NA4P. Ultimately, it shows that the NA4P will likely be confronted with the same challenges faced by the WPS Agenda in a period of securitisation and militarisation unless there is a paradigm shift in the security imagination to prioritise human security, elevate the role of women in state security structures, and provide direct funding and resources to realise both agendas.
Topic:
United Nations, Peace, Women, Peace, and and Security (WPS)
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. Advancing Norms for Outer Space Security

Author:
Natália Archinard
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
In the last decade the outer space sector has undergone a revolution. The number of space objects and missions has increased like never before,2 with many new public and private actors and renewed ambitions in space exploration. Commercial actors are playing a more prominent role alongside governments. The so-called “New Space” industrial dynamic is largely supporting these developments by offering cheaper and faster production in numerous space-related areas, as well as new kinds of products and services. The value of the global outer space economy is estimated to have reached US$547 billion in 2022 and could grow to US$1 trillion by 2030.3 From the origins of the exploration of outer space, this domain has been a strategic site where states could develop and demonstrate their technological capacities. Space-based technologies and satellite applications are currently providing essential information, services and tools in many areas of socioeconomic development, including in support of the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The collaboration between the public and private sectors in outer space is becoming ever more varied and entangled, leading to the establishment of strong ties and common interests. Military space-related capabilities may be used to impede the development of foreign commercial outer space systems4 and vice versa, while private actors may be directly involved in the development of military space capabilities or provide services to support them.5 Furthermore, pressure on the outer space environment, which is used both for military and civilian purposes, results in sustainability and safety considerations becoming intertwined with security concerns. Outer space activities are thus particularly sensitive to geopolitical tensions between countries, which have reached new highs since the start of the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Given the intrinsic competition between space actors and the risk of confrontation in outer space, it has become clear that new norms are required to keep misunderstandings and misperceptions at as low a level as possible and to ensure that outer space remains a stable and secure environment where activities can be conducted safely in the long term.
Topic:
Security, Geopolitics, Space, and Norms
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. Peace of Mind: Cognitive Warfare and the Governance of Subversion in the 21st Century

Author:
Jean-Marc Rickli, Frederico Mantellassi, and Gwyn Glasser
Publication Date:
08-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The 21st century is marked by unprecedented and exponential technological advances. These advances are changing the ways in which states influence, coerce, subvert and wage war, and have democratised access to global means of influence for non-state actors – and even individuals. This has accelerated the prevalence of so-called hybrid forms of warfare. An “age of unpeace” appears to have established itself, with a pervasive sense of both non-peace and non-war. Influence campaigns utilising digitally spread disinformation and instrumentalising social media technologies have proliferated, enhancing ways to target the human mind. Current and future developments in artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive sciences, neurotechnologies, and other related fields will further increase the risks of mass manipulation and lead to the possibility of the militarisation of the mind as the battlefield of the future. The emergence of the cognitive domain as the sixth domain of warfare will lead to the increased conduct of cognitive warfare, which is likely to raise the profile and efficiency of non-kinetic means of subversion over kinetic means of coercion, while benefitting from a lack of international governance. If international governance remains static while these tools advance at great speeds, the international system will lack the frameworks, tools, and understanding needed to govern the means of 21st century subversion. This policy brief explores the emergence of cognitive warfare – which aims at controlling what and how an adversary thinks – and the rise on the international stage of non-kinetic means of subversion enabled by emerging technologies. It proposes the establishment of governance frameworks to regulate the use of emerging technologies for purposes of cognitive warfare with the ultimate aim of subversion. It promotes the concept of “subversion control” in order to prevent the militarisation of the mind. It further recommends the regulation of enabling emerging technologies, such as neurotechnologies and AI, while promoting the enhancement of “societal resilience”, especially in democracies, whose open and digitalised information environments make them structurally more vulnerable to the practices of cognitive warfare. Lastly, the brief seeks to promote more research into the concept of cognitive warfare itself, w
Topic:
Science and Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognitive Warfare
Political Geography:
Global Focus

10. Instruments for Sustaining Peace: The Contribution of Strategic Foresight

Author:
Emily Munro
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General recently observed that “We have war reporters, but there are no peace reporters”.1 Building and sustaining peace is a long-term endeavour and does not create the headlines that war does. However, it is not only the attention of the media, but also that of governments, regional and international organisations, and others that have difficulty focusing on the long-term efforts required to build and sustain peace, and instead focus on short-term crises associated with conflict. This perpetuates a cycle whereby the issues that are growing in importance are not tackled early enough and become the crisis of the day. How can this cycle be broken? The concept of sustaining peace provides one answer.2 This concept, as the UN proposed in 2016, emphasises “a comprehensive approach to sustaining peace, particularly through the prevention of conflict and addressing its root causes”.3 It recognises that the stages or phases of any conflict are not clearly defined categories, and therefore attempts to break down barriers between artificially defined phases. It also includes explicit direction for approaches that are integrated across all sectors, and emphasises early action based firstly on the input of a wide group of stakeholders from across the society of a conflict-affected country and secondly on strong local, regional and international partnerships.4 The implementation of the sustaining peace concept is ongoing.5 Another component of the answer to the question of how to break the cycle referred to above comes from strategic foresight. Strategic foresight is the “structured and explicit exploration of multiple futures in order to inform decision-making”.6 It thus includes both a strategic thinking dimension, but also one of action and agency. Strategic foresight has a long history of increasing application in the public and private sectors across a variety of topics.7 While rapid technological change and the growing impact of climate change were increasing the prominence and value of strategic foresight approaches prior to 2020, more recent events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have led to an increasing interest in this approach, including in the peace and security domain. How strategic foresight can support efforts to build lasting peace received strong support from the UN Secretary-General in his report entitled Our Common Agenda, when he recommended that the New Agenda for Peace (which is due to be published in the form of a UN Secretary-General Policy Brief in June 2023) focuses in part on “Strengthening international foresight and capacities to identify and adapt to new peace and security risks”.8 Initiatives by Mexico in November 2021 and Japan in January 2023 in the UN Security Council (UNSC) under their respective presidencies of that body have provided opportunities for debate on themes related to sustaining peace.9 A further debate scheduled by Switzerland during its UNSC presidency in May 2023 will renew attention on the issue in the lead-up to the Summit of the Future in 2024 and at a strategic time before the New Agenda for Peace is due. At least one permanent member of the UNSC, the United Kingdom (UK), explicitly encouraged the UN to strengthen its “foresight capabilities to anticipate risks and inform our responses” in the context of the prevention of conflict and the implementation of nationally owned peacebuilding processes during the 26 January 2023 UNSC debate.10 An important backdrop to these recent efforts is the overarching commitment made in the preamble of the UN Charter “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”,11 and renewed emphasis on what today’s policymakers owe future generations.12 This is an issue that Switzerland reminded the UNSC of in the 26 January 2023 debate, stating “the New Agenda for Peace must serve as leverage for building sustainable peace. In these dark times, we owe it to all generations, everywhere in the world, to join our efforts and seize this opportunity”.13 This Policy Brief will address the gaps that exist in the steps we need to take today to build long-term sustainable peace. At its heart it will be a discussion of the instruments that link insights on how the future may evolve with decision-making around building peaceful societies. It will be argued that these foresight instruments need to be both routine and agile, and that they should be embedded in institutions involved in building sustainable peace.
Topic:
United Nations, Institutions, Sustainability, and Peacebuilding
Political Geography:
Global Focus