The undersigned civil society organisations welcome the development of draft Rules of Procedure (RoP) for the Conference of States Parties to the UN Convention against Cybercrime. The Rules will play a decisive role in shaping how the Convention is implemented in practice and whether its institutional framework supports transparency, accountability, and effective participation by all relevant stakeholders.

During the negotiation of the Convention, non-governmental organisations, civil society, academic institutions, technical experts, and private sector actors contributed significant legal and technical expertise through inclusive and transparent engagement under the Ad Hoc Committee (AHC) process. Preserving and strengthening those participatory practices during implementation is essential to maintaining the legitimacy of the Convention and ensuring that its application remains grounded in international human rights law and standards.

While the current draft Rules of Procedure contain several positive elements, including recognition of observers and baseline transparency obligations, significant gaps remain. This statement identifies four priority areas where the draft Rules require strengthening to support meaningful engagement, institutional legitimacy, and rights-respecting implementation of the Convention, and sets out concrete recommendations to address these gaps.

Fair Accreditation and Continuity of Participation

Rule 17 establishes the framework governing accreditation and participation of non-governmental actors. As drafted, however, the accreditation process risks creating unnecessary barriers to participation and enabling politicised exclusion.

In particular, the objection-based mechanism under Rule 17(2) allows a single objection to trigger referral of an application to the Conference of States Parties. Without safeguards, this creates the possibility of arbitrary exclusion of organisations working on sensitive issues such as human rights, accountability, journalism, or digital security.

In addition, the draft does not sufficiently safeguard continuity between the AHC negotiations and the implementation phase. Civil society organisations accredited to the AHC made sustained substantive contributions throughout the negotiation process. Bracketed language in Rule 17 (Compilation 1, paragraphs 3–4) provides a mechanism to preserve that participation, yet its retention remains uncertain.

Failure to maintain continuity would undermine institutional memory, disrupt established multi-stakeholder engagement, and risk excluding organisations that have already demonstrated their relevance and expertise.

A credible Rules of Procedure framework should therefore ensure that accreditation processes are predictable, objective, and insulated from politicisation, while preserving the participation of stakeholders previously accredited during the Convention’s negotiation.

Meaningful Engagement Modalities Beyond Formal Observer Status

Accreditation alone does not guarantee meaningful participation. As currently drafted, Rule 17 provides limited clarity on what observer participation entails in practice. Speaking opportunities under Compilation 1 paragraph 5(b) remain dependent on discretionary invitation by the President, while access to documents under paragraph 5(c) lacks guarantees regarding timeliness.

Without predictable modalities for engagement, observers may be able to formally attend meetings but be unable to contribute in ways that meaningfully inform deliberations. Interventions delivered late in the agenda cycle or without access to draft materials risk becoming symbolic rather than substantive.

To ensure that participation is meaningful and effective, observers must have timely access to documents and structured opportunities to contribute to discussions on agenda items, including those on implementation and institutional development.

Clear participation modalities adopted by the Conference itself would support consistency, transparency, and fairness, while still preserving the authority of States Parties over decision-making.

Transparency and Access to Information

Transparency is a prerequisite for meaningful participation and public confidence in the Conference’s work. While the draft Rules address public and private meetings (Rule 40) and require recordings of meetings to be made (Rule 39), they do not ensure that meetings are presumptively open, nor that recordings or meeting records are made publicly available. This discretion and lack of guarantees for openness risks shifting substantive discussions away from public scrutiny.

Moreover, while the Secretariat is tasked with distributing and circulating Conference documents (Rule 33), the draft Rules do not establish a centralised and publicly accessible platform for the systematic publication of official documents, stakeholder submissions, and meeting records.

During the AHC process, a dedicated online platform enabled timely access to draft texts, statements, and meeting materials, supporting transparency and informed participation across regions. The absence of comparable arrangements under the draft Rules represents a step backwards from established practice.

Without timely public access to materials and records, stakeholders unable to attend meetings in person, particularly organisations based in the Global Majority, face significant barriers to effective engagement. Strengthening transparency therefore requires not only the recording of meetings, but also the timely public availability of recordings and documents, alongside a clear presumption of openness across all Conference bodies.

Future-Proofing Participation in Emerging Institutional Processes

The draft Rules anticipate the possible establishment of additional institutional processes through future decisions of the Conference of States Parties, including review or monitoring mechanisms adopted under Rule 2(3). These processes are likely to play a central role in assessing implementation, shaping interpretation of the Convention, and informing future institutional development.

However, the draft Rules do not embed baseline guarantees ensuring that such future mechanisms will operate transparently or allow for stakeholder participation. This creates a risk that bodies with significant oversight or normative influence could be established through stand-alone resolutions without clear access modalities, transparency standards, or participation frameworks.

Embedding participation and transparency safeguards at this stage is therefore essential to ensure institutional consistency and legal certainty, and to prevent regression in future arrangements. Clear baseline standards would help ensure that review mechanisms, subsidiary bodies, and any future additional protocols are developed through inclusive, predictable, and rights-respecting processes.

Recommendations

For addressing the gaps identified here we offer the following recommendations:

Fair Accreditation and Continuity of Participation

• Ensure automatic observer status for organisations holding ECOSOC consultative status. (Rule 17(1))
• Reform objection-based accreditation procedures to prevent politicised exclusion, including through written objections, objective eligibility criteria, provisional participation, and timely resolution. (Rule 17(2))
• Preserve continuity with the AHC process by retaining Compilation 1 paragraphs 3–4 of Rule 17, ensuring participation across plenary meetings, subsidiary bodies, and intersessional periods. (Rule 17, Comp. 1 paras. 3–4)
• Reject restrictive accreditation criteria, including minimum years-of-existence requirements. (Rule 17, Comp. 2 para. 3(f))
• Avoid accreditation requirements dependent on State-issued criminal record attestations.  (Rule 17, Comp. 2 para. 3(h))

Meaningful Engagement Modalities Beyond Formal Observer Status

• Establish predictable and timely modalities for observer interventions on substantive agenda items. (Rule 17, Comp. 1 para. 5(b))
• Guarantee timely access to official and working documents of the Conference and its subsidiary bodies. (Rule 17, Comp. 1 para. 5(c))
• Enable accredited observers to submit written proposals for agenda items or sub-items prior to agenda adoption. (Rules 8–11)

Transparency and Access to Information

• Reinforce the presumption of public meetings, including for subsidiary bodies, with any closure being exceptional and reasoned. (Rule 40(1))
• Ensure recordings of public meetings are made publicly available in a timely manner. (Rule 39)
• Establish a centralised online platform maintained by the Secretariat for publication of official documents, stakeholder submissions, and meeting records. (Rule 33)

Future-Proofing Participation in New Institutional Processes

• Embed transparency and stakeholder participation guarantees in any future review or monitoring mechanisms established by the Conference. (Rule 2(3))
  

We hope that our recommendations contribute towards the enhancement of the modalities for stakeholder participation in the procedures of the Conference of State Parties to the UNCC by building on the positive precedent of the AHC and other UN mechanisms. We remain available to provide further expertise and assistance.

This statement is supported by the following organisations:

• Global Partners Digital (GPD)
• Hiperderecho
• Instituto Panamericano de Derecho y Tecnología (IPANDETEC)
• R3D: Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales
• CyberPeace Institute
• Access Now
• TEDIC 
• AfroLeadership
• Fundacion InternetBolivia.org
• Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet)
• Global Network Initiative (GNI)
• Social Media Exchange (SMEX)