ABSTRACT
Lawyers noted that international law has successfully expanded to deal with emerging legal challenges related to air warfare, precision munitions, and noninternational armed conflict. This chapter focuses on the application of general international law and the law of armed conflict. It draws on the application of international human rights law to cyberspace operations, and efforts to control interstate cyber conflict through the development of international norms of behaviour. The continuing ambiguity in the area, caused partly by a lack of official public discourse, creates uncertainty about how international law will be applied to cyber operations. If states are driven over the threshold of armed conflict by cyberspace or other aggressive activity, international humanitarian law takes effect. Cognizant of the gaps in international law, especially with regard to civilian protections from the negative effects of cyberspace operations, several efforts to develop norms of appropriate state behaviour have been undertaken.
