President Nursultan Nazarbayev told the debate’s opening session – held at United Nations Headquarters in New York – that it was worrying that “not a single international convention or multilateral treaty governs information processes.

“Is it not the reason why, in practical terms, most hacker attacks on banks, businesses, government institutions, the military and even nuclear facilities have been carried out with impunity?” he asked.

Mr. Nazarbayev stressed the need for what he called “an international legal framework of the global information space.”

He said such a legal framework could be based on the nine elements of a global culture of cybersecurity, which the General Assembly adopted in 2002.

In his speech today the Kazakh President also underlined the importance of greater dialogue between the Islamic world and the West, in a bid to counter Islamophobia and promote harmony between peoples of different religions and ethnicities.