The Role of Digital Peace in Maintaining Security and Resolving Conflicts

Sawt Al-Amal (Voice of Hope) – Afrah Borji

Social media is a powerful tool for building mutual relationships, interaction between people, creating job opportunities, exchanging information and knowledge, and other positive areas. However, it has a negative side that lies in the need for security that preserves the privacy of users and protects them from penetration.

There are positive and negative aspects of social media; in the positive side, it plays important roles in developing the community and enhancing communication among its members, also contributes to networking between people from different cultures and backgrounds. Despite the many positives, there are challenges facing the need for security that maintains the privacy of users; hackers can access user data such as names, numbers, photos, and other sensitive information that violates privacy.

Important Role

Azmi Ghaleb, a specialist from the YODIT organization in Taiz, says, “The role of digital peace in maintaining security and resolving conflicts lies in using the Internet safely and not using modern technology for extortion or attacking others. Among the roles of digital peace: firstly, the use must be safe, so we do not use any tools that affect the lives of others or violate the privacy of users. Secondly, the role of digital peace, or the role of technologies, is to use them positively to solve a problem. For example, using technology such as a webinar to disseminate information about digital peace.”

Critical Ways to Reach Digital Peace

Azmi Ghaleb also explains the importance of digital peace in maintaining security and resolving conflicts. Our lives are completely built on the internet, and digital peace is important because it solves all technical problems, such as extortion, hacking, and device loss, which are causes of conflicts. Therefore, digital peace reduces these causes.

Thus, digital peace is a double-edged sword; digital security can be a cause of conflicts or a solution to them through the role that technology plays in conflict resolution and safe internet use.

Azmi Ghaleb further explains that if digital peace is found, many problems will be solved, such as conflicts due to digital security that reach complex or severe conflicts, and some of them reach abductions. If these problems are caused by the internet and technology, digital peace is a solution to them before the disaster occurs.

Azmi adds, “When we face a problem, such as blackmail or others, due to modern technologies, we must have a widespread digital culture in the community about how to use the internet safely, how to save and send information, and how to deal with strangers online.”

Azmi adds, “For this reason, technology is a big part of conflict resolution. For example, surveillance cameras in stores and public streets work to resolve conflicts by imposing security, thus alleviating problems within the community. We see many social problems, such as theft and physical violence, and here surveillance cameras and technology play a big role in resolving these conflicts and that this technology is an important way to maintain security.”

Digital Peace & Privacy

According to Ahmed Ghazi, “Digital peace plays a pivotal role in maintaining security and resolving conflicts in countries that are experiencing conflicts, such as Yemen. This is done through the use of new digital technologies for the benefit of peace, and by addressing the risks that undermine this noble mission in order to put an end to human conflicts in the end.

In the same context, Salah Al-Jundi, a journalist, says, “As a citizen and journalist, I have a lot of privacy and information that I do not like to share with others, so digital safety is very important and necessary to create psychological and social peace as well.”

Al-Jundi continues, “There are many issues, problems, and conflicts that were caused by the lack of awareness on the digital side, which some exploited to abuse others and violate their privacy. This has led to blackmail or defamation. When there is a community armed with digital security, it realizes the importance of this, and that helps in preserving the conflict.”

Al-Jundi explained that preserving the privacy of individuals and communities helps in peace, security, and conflict resolution. Because our Yemeni society faces a major problem related to digital awareness among the community, which makes many citizens exposed to many violations and psychological pressures that arise due to the exploitation of the digital security weakness of users. Therefore, the Yemeni community needs intensive training programs to raise awareness of the importance of digital peace and deliver digital knowledge to everyone.

Challenges

According to Azmi Ghaleb, there are several challenges that hinder the achievement of digital peace in Yemen, including:

• Low digital culture among the community, which is a major obstacle to achieving digital peace. Therefore, it is necessary to disseminate digital culture through seminars, workshops, and training courses on digital peace, safe internet use, and how to save data and information. This is a way to address the poverty of digital culture.

• Lack of strict and explicit laws that can punish blackmailers, or these laws represent a deterrent to electronic crime.
• Weak digital culture among parents. If there is a person who blackmails a girl, the girl is more afraid of her family than of the blackmailer. Therefore, the girl surrenders greatly to the blackmailer, and the blackmail process continues until it reaches a certain stage where the girl cannot meet any requests of the person who is blackmailing her. This leads to major crimes such as kidnapping, suicide, violence, and others.

Azmi Ghaleb concludes his speech by saying, “Finally, I can say that it is necessary to have a digital culture to protect the girl, whether from hacking, losing her phone, or protecting her data.

Significant UN Strategies for Digital Peace

“The United Nations launched a digital transformation strategy for peacekeeping as a key step aimed at increasing early warning capabilities in information visualization and data transfer about the reality on the ground,” said Engineer Ahmed Ghazi, beginning his speech on UN strategies for digital peace.

He added, “The United Nations also launched its strategy related to the digital transformation of UN peacekeeping operations in August 2021 in a session of the UN Security Council, which aimed to fully adopt new technology in the face of constantly changing challenges.”

Ghazi continued, “The United Nations seeks to use technological innovation in its headquarters and in the field, by maximizing the potential of current and new technologies to assist peacekeeping missions, including improving the ability to detect threats to the lives of civilians.” Social media is a powerful tool that can be used for good or evil. It can be used to disseminate news, ideas, and reach people from all over the world, or to spread hatred and incite violence. Therefore, it is important that users are aware of the risks they face when using these tools.