Building Trust and Protection for Essential Digital Services
ICRC
Session 436
The Digital Emblem Project From Standards to Deployment
As essential services increasingly rely on digital infrastructure, ensuring that protected humanitarian, medical, and cultural services can be reliably identified online has become an important challenge. This session will explore the Digital Emblem Project as a practical initiative to translate international humanitarian law protections into the digital environment. Bringing together legal, technical, standards, and operational perspectives, the panel will examine how the project is moving from concept to implementation: from its legal foundations and technical architecture, to ongoing standardization work at the IETF as well as work at the ITU, and early reflections on deployment by protected actors such as Red Cross/Red Crescent national societies and cultural heritage organizations. The discussion will highlight how digital trust mechanisms, including cryptographic certificates and open standards, can help strengthen the protection of essential services in armed conflict and other crises.
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C4. Capacity building
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C5. Building confidence and security in use of ICTs
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C11. International and regional cooperation
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Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
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Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies
- Objective 3: Foster an inclusive, open, safe and secure digital space that respects, protects and promotes human rights