How ICANN and IGF Are Trying to Keep the Internet Open in Conflict Zones?

Inside ICANN and IGF’s Fight to Protect Connectivity in War Zones!

In the world’s most dangerous places, internet access isn’t a luxury — it’s how people call for help, document atrocities, and prove they still exist. Here’s the untold story of how two global bodies are trying — and sometimes failing — to keep the digital world open when the physical one is falling apart.

"The first casualty of war is truth," the saying goes. But in the 21st century, truth has a modem. When governments shut down the internet during conflicts, they don't just cut communications — they erase evidence, isolate populations, and strangle the very mechanisms that might hold them accountable. Keeping the internet open in conflict zones has become one of the defining human rights battles of our era.

And at the centre of that battle — quietly, imperfectly, but persistently — stand two global bodies: ICANN and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

Why the Internet Becomes a Target in Conflict?

Before we explore what ICANN and IGF are doing, we need to understand why authoritarian governments and warring factions target internet infrastructure in the first place.

The answer is devastatingly simple: a connected population is harder to control.

Documentation of atrocities: Citizens with smartphones and internet access can record and upload evidence of war crimes in real time — making internet shutdowns a tool of impunity.
Coordination of resistance: Opposition movements, journalists, and civil society organisations rely on the internet to organise, communicate, and survive.
Humanitarian access: Aid organisations, medical workers, and refugees use the internet to locate services, signal distress, and coordinate evacuations.
Economic survival: In conflict zones, the internet is often the last functional economic infrastructure — enabling payments, remittances, and remote work that keeps families fed.
Narrative control: Governments that shut down the internet can shape the story — or erase it entirely — before the outside world can respond.

The scale of the problem: According to Access Now's Shutdown Tracker, more than 70% of all recorded internet shutdowns between 2019 and 2025 occurred during periods of armed conflict, civil unrest, or political crisis. The internet has become the primary battlefield for information warfare — and its infrastructure is ground zero.

283

Shutdowns recorded in conflict contexts 2020–2025

$5.5B

Economic damage of conflict-related shutdowns per year

3.5B

People in countries with significant internet restrictions

UN resolutions with enforcement power on shutdowns

2011

Year Egypt’s 5-day blackout changed internet governance forever

Conflict Zones Where Internet Access Became a Weapon

These are not abstract statistics. These are places where keeping the internet open in conflict zones has meant the difference between exposure and erasure, between survival and silence:

Critical — Total Blackout

Myanmar (2021–Present)

Following the military coup, internet blackouts were used to conceal mass detentions and killings. Citizens relied on VPNs and satellite links to document junta violence. Connectivity remains deeply throttled.

Critical— Infrastructure Destroyed

Gaza Strip (2023–Present)

Repeated full internet blackouts during active military operations. Telecom infrastructure targeted and destroyed. The UN condemned the shutdowns as preventing documentation of civilian casualties.

Severe — Selective Throttling

Ukraine (2022–Present)

Russian strikes targeted telecom towers, data centres, and power infrastructure. Elon Musk’s Starlink became a lifeline for military and civilian connectivity — an unprecedented role for commercial satellite internet.

Severe — Repeated Shutdowns

Sudan (2023–Present)

The RSF-SAF conflict has caused repeated internet outages across the country. With fighting in Khartoum targeting key telecom infrastructure, restoration has been impossible in active combat areas.

High — Targeted Platform Blocks

Iran (2019–Present)

During protests, Iran has deployed total national shutdowns alongside persistent platform blocks. The 2019 protests were accompanied by a near-complete 5-day blackout. Mobile internet remains tightly controlled.

Moderate — Regional Disruptions

Ethiopia / Tigray (2020–2022)

An 18-month internet blackout in the Tigray region coincided with a period of alleged mass atrocities. With connectivity gone, the world couldn’t see — and perpetrators knew it.

ICANN: What Can It Actually Do in a War Zone?

When we talk about keeping the internet open in conflict zones, most people assume ICANN — as the closest thing to a global internet authority — must have significant power to intervene. The reality is more nuanced, and more honest, than that.

ICANN does not control internet access. It cannot force a government to restore connectivity. What it can do is protect the naming and addressing infrastructure that makes the internet function — even in the middle of a war.

ICANN	IGF
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers	Internet Governance Forum (UN Body)
Protects country-code domain zones (.ua, .sy, .mm) from being seized or disrupted	Provides a global platform to document and debate internet shutdowns in conflict
Maintains global DNS root zone stability regardless of ground conditions	Issues statements connecting internet access to international humanitarian law
Refuses to revoke or weaponise domains of conflict states as a political act	Convenes civil society, governments, and technical experts on crisis connectivity
Coordinates with local registries to maintain operations during crisis	Hosts Dynamic Coalitions specifically focused on access in conflict situations
Funds capacity-building for registries in fragile and conflict-affected states	Produces policy recommendations governments can adopt domestically
Advocates for internet access as critical infrastructure — not a combat target	Amplifies voices of affected communities in international policy spaces

The key distinction: ICANN works at the technical coordination layer — keeping the domain name system functioning and stable even when the physical network is under attack. IGF works at the political and policy layer — building the norms and arguments that make shutdowns harder to justify internationally. Both are necessary. Neither alone is sufficient.

ICANN’s Specific Interventions: The Ukraine Case Study

The Russia-Ukraine war became the most significant test of ICANN’s role in conflict-affected internet governance in its history. When Ukraine formally requested ICANN revoke Russian internet identifiers in March 2022, ICANN’s response revealed both its principles and its limits.

What Ukraine Requested

Revoke Russian country-code domains: .ru, .рф (Cyrillic), and .su (Soviet-era legacy)
Shut down DNS root servers operating in Russia
Revoke SSL certificates for Russian organisations
Effectively sever Russia from the visible global internet

What ICANN Did — And Why

Refused the domain revocation request — citing its mandate to preserve a single, interoperable global internet and avoid becoming a geopolitical instrument
Maintained root server stability in Ukraine — actively working to keep Ukrainian DNS infrastructure (.ua zone) operational despite ongoing bombardment
Coordinated with RIPE NCC (Europe’s IP registry) on protecting Ukrainian IP address resources
Issued formal statements affirming the internet as critical civilian infrastructure that should not be targeted under international humanitarian law
Accelerated support for Ukrainian registry operators to maintain operations from safer locations

The principled paradox: ICANN's refusal to "pull the plug" on Russia — even during an active invasion — was simultaneously its most controversial and most defensible decision. Had it complied, it would have established that any sufficiently powerful coalition could disconnect any country's internet for political reasons. That precedent would have endangered every nation's internet sovereignty — including Ukraine's own.

The IGF’s Evolving Role: From Talking Shop to Crisis Forum

The Internet Governance Forum has long been criticised as a discussion platform without teeth — a place where speeches are made and reports are published, but nothing actually changes. That criticism hasn’t entirely disappeared. But the IGF has evolved in important ways.

Key IGF Initiatives on Conflict Zone Connectivity

Dynamic Coalition on Internet Governance in Conflict

A working group specifically examining how internet governance frameworks apply during armed conflict — developing principles that could inform both technical actors and military commanders.

Best Practices Forum on Cybersecurity

Addresses the deliberate targeting of internet infrastructure as a weapon of war — building the normative case that attacks on DNS, cables, and data centres constitute attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Internet Shutdown Monitoring

IGF-connected civil society partners including Access Now and NetBlocks provide real-time documentation of shutdowns — creating evidence records used in international accountability mechanisms.

Connectivity in Crisis Dialogues

Annual IGF sessions bringing together satellite operators, humanitarian organisations, governments, and technical bodies to coordinate emergency connectivity responses during conflicts.

National IGF Support

IGF has helped establish national and regional IGF processes in conflict-affected regions — giving local stakeholders a platform to raise connectivity issues in international governance spaces.

Humanitarian Connectivity Principles

Working toward internationally recognised principles that would classify internet infrastructure as protected under Geneva Convention frameworks — a major ongoing advocacy effort.

“In a war zone, the camera is the weapon and the internet is the ammunition. Cut the internet, and you can commit atrocities in the dark.”

The Tools Being Used to Keep the Internet Open in Conflict Zones

Beyond ICANN and IGF, a broader ecosystem of technical solutions and policy tools has emerged to protect internet access when states shut it down or infrastructure is destroyed:

Low Earth Orbit Satellite Internet (Starlink, OneWeb): Bypasses terrestrial infrastructure entirely. Ukraine’s use of Starlink demonstrated that satellite internet can sustain military and civilian connectivity even when ground infrastructure is destroyed — and reshaped the geopolitics of space-based communications.
Mesh Networks: Decentralised peer-to-peer networks that route around damaged or blocked infrastructure. Deployed by NGOs in conflict zones including Syria and Myanmar where conventional ISP access has failed.
VPNs and Tor: Widely used by journalists, activists, and civilians to bypass government-imposed blocks. Not a perfect solution — they require some baseline connectivity — but critical for circumventing platform-level censorship.
Distributed DNS Resolvers: Services like Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 help citizens in restricted countries access the open internet by bypassing state-controlled DNS servers that block specific domains.
Emergency Communications Coordination: The ITU and UN humanitarian agencies maintain emergency spectrum allocations and coordination frameworks that can be activated to support connectivity in disaster and conflict zones.
Mirror Sites and Distributed Content: Civil society organisations mirror news sites, human rights documentation, and communication tools across multiple domains and servers to ensure continued access even when primary sites are blocked.

The Hard Limits: What ICANN and IGF Cannot Do

Intellectual honesty demands we be clear about what these organisations fundamentally cannot achieve, regardless of intent:

What They Can’t Do	What They Can Do
Force governments to restore internet access	Protect DNS zone stability under attack
Rebuild destroyed physical infrastructure	Refuse to weaponise domain names politically
Override a government’s control of domestic ISPs	Build international norms against shutdowns
Impose sanctions or legal consequences	Document and amplify shutdown evidence
Deploy emergency connectivity hardware	Coordinate technical resilience measures
Prevent military targeting of telecoms	Support local registry operations in crisis
Enforce international humanitarian law	Advocate in international policy spaces

The truth: The real power to keep the internet open in conflict zones lies not with technical coordination bodies, but with geopolitical pressure, military restraint, and the willingness of the international community to treat internet shutdowns as the human rights violations they are. ICANN and IGF are essential threads in that tapestry — but they are not the whole fabric.

The Voices From the Ground

“When the internet went down in Tigray, we lost our ability to call for help. We lost our ability to prove what was happening to us. The world went blind because we went dark.”

— Tigray-based human rights documentarian, 2022 IGF testimony

“Internet infrastructure is civilian infrastructure. Targeting it in conflict is no different from targeting a hospital. We need international law to catch up with that reality.”

— Digital rights advocate, IGF 2023 session on conflict connectivity

“ICANN’s refusal to become a weapon was the right decision — even though it was an agonising one. The moment we use domain names as sanctions, we lose the one thing that keeps the internet whole.”

— Internet governance scholar, on the Ukraine-Russia ICANN decision

What Needs to Happen Next: The Road Ahead

Keeping the internet open in conflict zones requires more than what ICANN and IGF can deliver alone. Here is what the international community must urgently build:

International legal protection for internet infrastructure: An Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions classifying core internet infrastructure — cables, data centres, DNS servers — as protected civilian infrastructure under humanitarian law.
A global rapid-response connectivity fund: Pre-positioned satellite terminals, emergency spectrum allocations, and funding that can be deployed within 72 hours of a conflict-related shutdown.
Binding shutdown accountability mechanisms: UN Human Rights Council procedures that automatically trigger diplomatic consequences for states that impose conflict-related internet shutdowns against civilian populations.
Resilient local registry infrastructure: ICANN-supported backup systems allowing country-code domain zones to operate even when a country’s primary infrastructure is destroyed or occupied.
Civil society emergency connectivity partnerships: Formal agreements between satellite operators, humanitarian organisations, and IGF-connected civil society to coordinate emergency internet access deployment in crisis zones.
Inclusion of affected communities in governance: People living in conflict zones must have direct representation in ICANN and IGF processes — not just governments and corporations speaking on their behalf.

The Timeline: Key Moments in Conflict Zone Internet Governance

2011

Egypt’s 5-day total internet blackout during the Arab Spring becomes the watershed moment that forces internet governance bodies to confront conflict-related shutdowns as a systemic issue.

2016

The UN Human Rights Council passes a resolution declaring internet shutdowns a violation of international human rights law — a landmark non-binding statement that shapes the normative debate.

2019

IGF establishes its first formal working group on internet governance in conflict situations. Access Now launches the #KeepItOn coalition — now tracking shutdowns in real time globally.

2021

Myanmar coup triggers extended internet blackouts. ICANN coordinates with the Myanmar registry to maintain the .mm domain zone. IGF emergency session addresses the crisis connectivity gap.

2022

Ukraine-Russia war: ICANN refuses to weaponise Russian domains despite formal Ukrainian government request. Starlink’s role in Ukraine reshapes the global debate on satellite internet as conflict-zone infrastructure. Most significant test of conflict-era internet governance to date.

2023–2024

Gaza communications blackouts during military operations trigger international condemnation. The ITU and UN Secretary-General call for protection of communications infrastructure. The IGF’s 2024 session places conflict connectivity at the top of the global internet governance agenda for the first time.

2025–2026

Negotiations begin on a potential new international framework for protecting internet infrastructure in armed conflict — drawing on IGF recommendations and ICANN’s operational experience. The outcome remains deeply uncertain.

Quick Recap: Everything You Need to Know

Internet shutdowns in conflict zones are a systematic tool of control, impunity, and narrative management — not incidental disruptions
ICANN protects the technical layer — keeping domain name systems and IP addressing stable even when physical infrastructure is under attack
IGF provides the policy and advocacy layer — building international norms that make shutdowns politically and legally harder to justify
Neither body can restore connectivity that a government has deliberately cut — their power is structural and normative, not operational
The Ukraine war was the most significant test of conflict-era internet governance — and ICANN’s principled neutrality, however painful, preserved the global internet’s integrity
Satellite internet, mesh networks, and VPNs fill the gap that governance bodies cannot — but they require international support and coordination
Keeping the internet open in conflict zones ultimately requires international law to treat internet infrastructure as protected civilian infrastructure — and that battle is still being fought

The Internet in War Zones Needs More Than Witnesses. It Needs Champions.

Understanding how ICANN and IGF navigate the impossible tension between internet freedom and geopolitical reality is the first step. What comes next is advocacy — for legal protections, for emergency connectivity frameworks, and for the principle that information itself is a human right that no conflict can legitimately erase.

How to Take Action ↗Internet Law & Conflict ↗

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