The UN Charter was signed in June 1945 upon the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (United Nations, 2018). It came into force in October 1945 (United Nations, 2018). All member states of the United Nations are required to comply with the UN Charter. Article 2(6) also provides that non-members are required to act in “accordance with the principle laid out” in the charter “so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security” (UN Charter, Article 2(6)). The UN Charter is the primary source with respect to international legal norms.

Article 2(2) of the Charter indicates that all members “shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present charter (United Nations, 1945). This means that every member state has a duty of good faith to fulfill the obligations set out in the Charter. “Good faith” is arguably abstract and it is based on the quasi-evaluation of the beliefs and levels of ‘honesty’ and ‘sincerity’ of the parties while they are dealing with each other. It is therefore arguable that ‘good faith’ is not necessarily measurable and that it may be difficult to enforce. This is however not the case entirely since in practice members have been forced to act in good faith in their dealings with other nations by first and foremost respecting their sovereignty and desisting from engaging in acts that effectively tend to threaten the territorial integrity and/ or political independence of any state (United Nations,1945).

This is very important because when obligations are not respected, rules become meaningless. Where a state fails to live up to its obligations, the Security Council can enforce based on its powers “under Chapter VII of the Charter” (Arnold, 2008). This was affirmed in the Bosnia Convention Case 1993 I.C.J. 325, where a nation’s territorial integrity and political independence as inferred in Article 2 (4) had been flouted leading up to a massive genocide and Judge Lauterpacht indicated that the Security Council had the authority to intervene based on its powers under Chapter VII of the Charter (Arnold, 2008). Essentially the principles set out in the UN Charter are legally binding on all member states as well as non-members. This is clearly set out in Article 2(6) which states that the “organization shall ensure that states which are not members of the United Nations act in accordance with” the principles laid out in the Charter “so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security” (United Nations, 1945). The principle laid out in Article 2(4) the UN Charter is of great normative value with respect to the cyberspace.

The culture and norms with respect to international law are also guided by scholarly writings and academic papers. They are sometimes used as a means of determining international legal culture and norms. They are however not primary but subsidiary sources of international law (Williams & Sergey, 2008). This is because they “do not establish rules of law but, rather, provide evidence or a means of identifying of those rules” (Williams & Sergey, 2008). They influence the development of international law to the effect that they provide additional insight on rules that are already existent. This means that source 3, a book dubbed Sovereignty in the age of cyber by Gary Corn and Robert Taylor qualifies as a scholarly writing and its normative value is as inferred above. The same rule applies to source 2 which is an academic paper or scholarly paper otherwise referred to as the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations. Scholarly writings are not necessarily used to “establish the content of International legal norms” but they are merely persuasive for usage in international tribunals (Williams & Sergey, 2008,). They cannot be relied upon exclusively to determine international norms. Source 2 is therefore not legally binding on all states.

As aforementioned, the UN Charter came into force in 1945. At the time the framers of the document did not reasonably specifically anticipate the advancement of technology that has now been witnessed over the past several decades. For instance, Article 2(4) of the Charter as framed at the time did not anticipate a scenario where territorial integrity of a nation could be infringed without necessarily crossing the physical borders of a nation. Technology is advancing at an unprecedented speed and the world is indeed becoming a global village. Therefore, Article 108 of the UN Charter may not necessarily be sufficient to all matters to do with international law in the cyberspace.

One of the emerging issues that may need to be addressed by an ideal international statute is the territorial application of laws with respect to domains. Currently, when individuals, corporations or governmental bodies seek to have an active online presence, they do so first and foremost through the registration of website domains. The place of registration or ‘headquarter’ of the website domain is easily traceable. There are times when terrorist elements may hack website accounts and conduct cyber-attacks. This among other matters cannot fully be redressed by reference to the UN Charter. I, therefore, suggest that additional law-making processes be undertaken to regulate cyber operations.

The UN Charter is a primary source of law with respect to international legal norms. All member states are required to fulfill their obligations as laid out in the statute. Non-members are also similarly required to comply with the principles in the statue. Scholarly writings and academic papers are also a subsidiary source of international law. However, they are of less normative value since they simply provide insight to the already existent international laws. There is need to create additional international laws with respect to the regulation of the cyberspace.