Introduction
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The Netherlands would like to express our gratitude to the Chair, the Secretariat and
the Consultants for their hard work on the zero draft, as well as to all OEWG
colleagues for their contributions including during this informal session.
Mr Chair, we commend you on this zero draft and we reaffirm our commitment and
support to you.
Overall, we regard the draft report as a good step towards a final report. It is a wellbalanced report covering the discussed elements nearly sufficiently.
In the spirit of working toward consensus, we would like to make some remarks on
the zero draft that focus on points we believe can be improved. We will also send a
more detailed written contribution.
THREATS AND NORMS
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Over the years, cyber- operations against the integrity, functioning and availability of
the internet has shown to be a real and credible threat. This was mentioned as
“public core” in the pre-draft of the OEWG. As we are striving for consensus, we
contacted the countries that had expressed concerns during our earlier discussions
and came to a new wording that seems to answer the concern. It reads as follows:
“the technical infrastructure essential to the general availability or integrity of the
internet”.
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We would like this to be mentioned under both paragraph 21 (threats) and 50
(norms). Given the earlier strong support for this norm both within the OEWG and
the wider multistakeholder community we feel that convergence is possible. We
believe that it has earned its place as one of the recommendations and really hope to
see it reflected in the final report.
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As previously recognized by the GGE, operations against critical infrastructure is
problematic and a threat to international peace and security. We therefore welcome
the explicit reference to threats against the healthcare sector and the technical
infrastructure essential to elections.
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As attacks on critical infrastructure that undermine trust and confidence in electoral
processes has been regarded as a real concern in para 21 (conclusion of threats), we
think this should also be mentioned under para 55 (conclusions of norms) as part of
the norms addressing critical infrastructure.