With reference to the letter of the Chair of the Open-ended Working Group on
developments in the field of information and telecommunications in the context of
international security (OEWG) dated 11.03.2020 circulating the initial pre-draft of the final
report, Egypt would like to submit the following remarks:
1- The delegation of Egypt highly commends the Chair’s remarkable efforts in leading
this historic process in an efficient and transparent manner. We reiterate our full
support to ensure that this unique inclusive process produces substantive outcomes,
including practical and concrete recommendations that would take forward the
United Nations (UN) endeavors in this highly strategic and critical domain.
2- We also highly appreciate the dedicated and professional efforts of the United
Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and the United Nations Institute
for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) in supporting this important process.
3- The active participation by Member States and the strong engagement by the
relevant stakeholders including non-governmental organizations, the private
sector, and the academia, have truly made this unique first experience an
excellent opportunity for advancing UN efforts on seeking common grounds and
mutual understandings on this increasingly strategic topic.
4- With this in mind, we welcome the pre-draft as an excellent basis for the
discussions leading to the third substantive session of the OEWG and for a final
report that contains a meaningful outcome which fulfills the OEWG’s mandate. In
this context, we would like to make the following preliminary remarks and
observations:
I. General Remarks:
5- The pre-draft managed to capture the discussions of the first and second
substantive sessions of the OEWG, as well as the intersessional consultations, in
a fairly balanced and comprehensive manner.
6- Many delegations, including Egypt, have expressed aspirations for the
operationalization of the existing rules and norms previously endorsed by the UN
General Assembly through upgrading their status and making them more binding
for all States. There delegations have also expressed their readiness to agree on
new rules and norms and highlighted the need for recommending the
consideration of a binding instrument that regulates the behaviour of States in the
ICT environment.
7- However, we fully realize the difficulty of including recommendations on these
elements due to the limitations imposed by the divergent views on several
fundamental issues and the lack of appetite by some Member States for the
development of any binding rules in this domain at this stage.
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