Challenges Posed By Cyber Warfare To The Principle Of Distinction

Over the last few decades,network technology has evolved by leaps and bounds,prompting the rapid development of the 'Global Internet'.Computer networks have been introduced into the whole of modern society,covering all aspects of human life.As a result,cyberspace has gradually become "the fifth domain" after land,sea,air and space,under both domestic and international law.However,due to the continuous development and general application of computer network,cyberspace has become a new sort of battlefield and cyber attack has become a new kind of attack.What kind of regulations should be applied in cyberspace to regulate the act of launching cyber attack during an armed conflict is an important question that both academic and practical circles pay much more attention to and this question is supposed to be addressed.Since cyber warfare is ""warfare" in nature,it is supposed to be regulated by international humanitarian law(IHL).The aim of this thesis is to analyze challenges of cyber warfare to the principle of distinction in international humanitarian law.However,as IHL long predated cyber warfare,as a new kind of method of warfare,the latter brings several challenges to the basic principles of IHL,especially to the principle of distinction.Therefore,the principle of distinction under IHL should be perfected.This thesis is divided into five parts.Part One is "Basic Concepts",first,expressing the one of the most important concepts under IHL,namely "armed conflict",and then discussing and defining the definition of three basic concepts related to cyber warfare,namely the terms of "cyberspace" and "cyber warfare" for the purpose of the thesis whereas,Part Two,"the Principle of Distinction and Warfare'',examines the scope of IHL and gives a brief description of the principle of distinction,which is the conceptual foundations of the whole thesis.Moving on,Part Three is "Cyber Warfare is Warfare and Should be Regulated by International Humanitarian Law",clearly showing that international humanitarian law should be applied in the field of cyber warfare and there is no need to create new rules and defining "cyber attack" under the system of IHL.Part Four is“Challenges Posed by Cyber Warfare to the Principle of Distinction and Suggestions",identifying and analyzing challenges posed by cyber attacks to the principle of distinction puting forward some tentative proposals to resolve these challenges respectively;and then treating the different challenges posed by cyber warfare to the principle of distinction as a whole,then providing some general recommendations that may be suitable for them.Finally,Chapter Five outlines the conclusions of this thesis that Cyber warfare does pose some challenges to the principle of distinction of IHL and that whilst there are also some suggestions in theory to those challenges.This thesis is mainly uses the literature analysis method,based on basic rules of the principle of distinction and the relevant documents of the International Committee of the Red Cross(the ICRC),articles in the field of cyber warfare published by scholars in recent years and Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations(the Tallinn Manual 2.0).Overall,the thesis is a summarization of the aforementioned material.If there are diverging academic opinions on the same issue,the author makes an appraisal of these opinions,before drawing her own conclusions.