environment.67 This understanding has let one author to classify according to “issues of degree” and “issues of kind”.68 Such variance in the definition of cybercrime is in part due to the rapid advances and evolutions in ICT, as well as understandings of cyberspace.69 III. Classifying Cybercrime While specific cybercrimes will be considered hereafter (see section 2 B, below), it is worth considering how different regimes have classified cybercriminal behavior in developing an understanding of cybercrime. In the absence of a unitary definition, and without any unitary concept of what cybercrime is, the term is better understood as a range of acts falling into a certain category of crimes.70 That said, while a classification or categorization of cybercrime is less contentious, it is nonetheless difficult to find consensus with regard to the appropriate divisions of acts constituting cybercrime in domestic legislation, multilateral instruments or the literature.71 Herein, seven different classifications, as laid out in international instruments are considered, namely, those of (A) the UN Secretariat, (B) COMSEC, (C) the AU; (D) the ECOWAS, (E) UNODC, (F) UNICRI and (G) the CoE. A. United Nations Secretariat The UN Secretariat carries out the diverse day-to-day work of the United Nations, servicing the other principal UN organs and administering their programs and policies. The Secretariat’s activities include administering peacekeeping operations, mediating international disputes, surveying economic and social trends and problems and preparing studies on human rights and sustainable development.72 In a background paper for a workshop on cybercrime presented at the Thirteenth UN Congress on Cybercrime Prevention and Criminal Justice in 2015, the UN Secretariat, building on its earlier documentation,73 took a binary approach to defining cybercrime. Under the UN Secretariat’s approach, cybercrime is categorized according to the nature of the offense: 1  Offenses affecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data or systems; and 2  Offenses where computer or ICT systems form an integral part of the crime’s modus operandi.74 B. Commonwealth Secretariat COMSEC is the main agency and central institution of the Commonwealth of Nations,75 an intergovernmental organization of fifty-three Member States that were mostly territories of the Page 73 | Chapter 2 | § A. Working Definition of Cybercrime Table of Contents