Final Report - Second Specialization Courses on Cyberdiplomacy and Techplomacy

The significant social changes arising from Internet governance call for closer cooperation between the technology industry and the authorities, and it is appropriate for policymakers in the region to put the issue of Internet governance and international cybersecurity at the centre of their foreign policies and international strategies, while ensuring that they have personnel specialised in the progress and development of the technology industry, with the knowledge and skills to play an effective role in managing international governance and online security.

Foreign policy makers must go beyond government-to-government dialogue by redirecting their efforts towards the establishment of relationships with a wide spectrum of actors in global governance, with technology players at the forefront.  

The Permanent Secretariat deems it desirable that Latin American and Caribbean countries incorporate techno-diplomacy into their foreign policy agendas and consider technology and Internet companies as geopolitical actors. In this context, traditional diplomacy must develop a more strategic approach as new companies emerge in a wide range of countries and regions whose technology will be increasingly linked to geopolitical competition.   

The training programme for Senior Officials in the digital era is part of this scenario, including specialisation courses in Cyberdiplomacy and Techplomacy. Their main purpose is for foreign ministries, related ministries and representatives of the academic sector of member countries to strengthen the relationship between diplomacy and technology by providing their officials with training in which they acquire sufficient expertise for an effective relationship with technological actors, the implications of cryptocurrencies in the international financial system, as well as the necessary training for future negotiations to establish rules that regulate the subject.    

Both courses are aimed primarily at civil servants, diplomats or international negotiators involved in foreign policy decision-making, as well as academics and specialists in the field of international relations.

1. Develop negotiating skills and gain a better understanding of technological development at the international level to promote the region's interests in the digital era;
2. Train participants in operating in cyberspace as they do in physical space and building the capacity to analyse different agendas in an international cyber community not free of relations and conflicts among states; and
3. Develop the skills of future negotiators with technological actors for the construction of an agreement on norms of behaviour in cyberspace, both in terms of Internet governance and cybersecurity.

Both courses will last 8 hours each (4 hours per day) and will take place from 21 to 24 March 2022. Training material in both written and multimedia format is included.

• Date

From 21 to 24 March 2022, from 9:00 a.m. to 13:00 p.m. (Caracas), through the ZOOM Platform. 

• Language of the event

The official language of the courses will be Spanish. There will be translation into English.

Mario Torres Jarrin

Director of the Institute of European Studies and Human Rights at the Pontifical University of Salamanca (Spain). He has been Director of the European Institute for International Studies (Sweden) and professor and researcher at Stockholm University (Sweden) and the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany), as well as visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), University of Bergen and University of Oslo (Norway), University Institute of Lisbon (Portugal), National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (Romania), University of Salamanca (Spain), University of Economics and Anglo American University (Czech Republic) and at different diplomatic academies in Europe and the Americas.

Shaun Riordan

Shaun Riordan is Director of the Chair for Diplomacy and Cyberspace at the European Institute for International Studies, Senior Member of the Charhar Institute (Beijing) and Senior Visiting Fellow of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations. He is a Principal Consultant on digital diplomacy and cyber diplomacy at UNITAR and a consultant on public diplomacy at UNDP. He has taught at diplomatic academies in Spain, Armenia, Bulgaria, Mongolia, Qatar and the Dominican Republic, as well as the Stock Exchange Institute in Madrid. He has been an associate professor at the LSE Global Governance Center.

Shaun is a former British diplomat who served at the UN, Taiwan, China and Spain, as well as in the Counter-Terrorism Departments of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in London.

He is the author of "The New Diplomacy" (2003), "Adiós a la Diplomacia" (2005), "Cyberdiplomacy; Gestión de la seguridad y la gobernanza en línea" (2019) and "La geopolítica del ciberespacio: una perspectiva diplomática" (2019). He is also co-author of "Los Futuros para la Diplomacia: La Diplomacia Integradora en el Siglo XXI” (2012) and the recent policy brief of the T20 "La ciberdiplomacia de la construcción de las normas en el ciberespacio". He holds a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom).

Moderator

Ms Sayed Durán. Analyst of Relations for Integration and Cooperation of SELA.

Once the application has been received, candidates must complete the registration form by entering the following links:
https://forms.office.com/r/7xCnXYxyve and https://forms.office.com/r/sQC1dDhYSs

Then, they will receive by email the invitation to enter the course, which will be delivered through the ZOOM platform.  

A training certificate will be granted.

Coordination by the Permanent Secretariat of SELA:

Sayed Durán
Analyst of Relations. Directorate for Integration and Cooperation of SELA
Telephones: (58-212)-955-7111 / 955-71
E-mail: sduran@sela.org

• Permanent Secretariat of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (SELA)
• European Institute for International Studies (EIIE)
• Institute of European Studies and Human Rights at the Pontifical University of Salamanca (UPSA)