Designing the Organisational Structure of the UN Cyber Peacekeeping Team

Abstract

Neither the UN Charter nor other UN documents provide for the establishment of cyber peacekeeping missions. By largely ignoring the cyber dimension, the UN reduces the effectiveness of the modern peacekeeping operations which may, in many cases, require cyber intervention. Hence, there is a pressing social need for the establishment of a separate organisation of UN peacekeepers responsible for keeping the peace in cyberspace. The article aims to facilitate the establishment of a UN cyber-peacekeeping team by proposing its organisational structure and examining the qualifications of the cyber peacekeepers, their legal relationship with the UN, and the location of the cyber peacekeeping team. The organisational structure is important because it impacts how the organisation concerned learns, acts, and evolves. The proposed structure consists of two departments and four sub-departments. Each of them is responsible for specific peacekeeping responsibilities, ranging from assessment of cyber-security risks to facilitating the development of e-commerce in post-conflict countries. Although the proposed structure is currently merely theoretical, it can be empirically tested by creating prototype versions of the departments included in it and measuring their effectiveness on the basis of various criteria, such as reducing levels of violence between belligerent parties, protecting civilians from violence, and compliance with ceasefires.