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International Law and Human Rights

Digitalisation presents new challenges for international law. The wide-ranging use of digital technologies by state and non-state actors requires a debate over which aspects are already covered by existing norms and regimes, and which still need to be developed. For relations between states, the UN Charter and humanitarian international law form the basis for this discussion. The issues here include, for example, the legal framework for eavesdropping by intelligence services and rules for restricting state-instigated cyber-attacks.

In addition, there is also growing interest in how digitalisation affects human rights. With respect to freedom of expression and the right to privacy, for example, we need to know whether existing norms need to be adapted to respond to new developments such as big data, artificial intelligence and internet filters. How these rights can be effectively protected within global communications networks is also a question.

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