![]() ![]() 2 Since the beginning of 2020, an unprecedented surge of misinformation and disinformation 3 surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has added a new sense of urgency while at the same time expanding the scope of the legal questions. ![]() The phenomenon is certainly neither abating nor geographically limited: in late 2020, for instance, Somalia expelled Kenya's diplomatic staff after accusations of electoral meddling. The interference in the 2016 US and the 2017 French presidential elections as well as that in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK are only the most prominent examples. The growing number of allegations of foreign influence activities over the past couple of years, carried out by a variety of international actors, directed against democratic decision-making processes in other States have put the problem of adversarial information operations, broadly understood as “any coordinated or individual deployment of digital resources for cognitive purposes to change or reinforce attitudes or behaviours of the targeted audience”, 1 high on the international agenda. ![]() The author wishes to thank Dr Kubo Mačák for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of the article. * This is the revised and updated version of the Geneva Academy Working Paper by Robin Geiß and Henning Lahmann, “Protecting the Global Information Space in Times of Armed Conflict” (February 2021). Specifically, it explores the existence and content of existing limits imposed by international humanitarian law on (digital) information operations and inquires whether the current framework adequately captures the humanitarian protection needs that arise from such conduct. This article aims to fill this gap by exposing some of the legal issues arising in relation to mis- and disinformation tactics during armed conflict in order to provide a starting point for further debate in this respect. The legal implications of information activities in the context of armed conflict against the background of the digital transformation have so far received only scarce attention. ![]()
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