The ESCWA Cyber Legislation Digest The Definition of Templates ESCWA developed the cyber legislation templates as tools which could help ESCWA member countries in formulating new cyber laws and/or the evaluation of their existing national cyber laws. There are six templates, each one covering one of the main areas for the enhancement of the regulatory framework for cyberspace. Each template includes components and sub-components for the development or adaptation of cyber legislation. The templates focus on principles, issues, areas of high concern and matters relating to the directive. By comparison, the six directives offer more concrete, specific proposals: chapters, sections and articles to be used while developing cyber legislation. The six templates are available on the webpage referred to in the link below.6 The directives are discussed in the Section 3.5. The Background and Current Status of the Templates The development of the templates started in 2007 and was based on several sources, such as:    Various international and regional conventions and agreements i.e. the Combating of Cybercrime by the European Union. The model laws and rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNICITRAL). National laws and regulations of some countries such as France’s laws on the protection of personal data. The templates were announced during the December 2008 workshop conducted by ESCWA (see Appendix B). They were first used to analyses the status of cyber legislation in the Kingdom of Bahrain and in Syria in the same year. By 2010, ESCWA had achieved the introduction of the templates in the Arab region, which are currently being implemented. The status of these countries is described in six tables corresponding to each directive. Each table contains a list of ESCWA member countries, and the specific parts of the templates that have been implemented in those countries. 3.5 The Six ESCWA Cyber Legislation Directives The six directives represent the core of the cyber legislation initiative’s output. They consist of sample laws expressed as chapters, sections and articles. For a detailed explanation of the methodology used to develop these directives, please consult Section 5: Process and Methodology. The package of six compatible directives was developed in Arabic as six separate documents. They have also been published as one consolidated document. 6 http://isper.escwa.un.org/FocusAreas/CyberLegislation/Template/tabid/201/language/en-US/Default.aspx 11