"It is now broadly accepted that internet shutdowns are unlawful, given their sweeping and disproportionate interference with a wide range of human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and assembly, life, security, health, education, work, family life, and food. However, the law of armed conflict has not kept pace. The absence of clear normative guardrails leaves the protection of and access to civilian digital infrastructure open to discretion, thereby eroding civilian protection. International humanitarian law (IHL) must therefore be recalibrated to expand the assessment of shutdowns’ legality beyond the narrow lens of whether or not they constitute attacks under IHL. Shutdowns should be assessed in light of the systemic and disproportionate harms they cause to civilians, which are difficult to reconcile with the principles of distinction, proportionality, precaution, and humanity, even in situations where attacking digital infrastructure might be militarily justified. Shutdowns impede humanitarian and medical operations, terrorize civilians, amount to collective punishment, and render useless objects indispensable to civilian survival — all prohibited under IHL. Existing protections for communications infrastructure used by humanitarian and medical actors should therefore be extended to encompass the broader civilian internet infrastructure on which people depend. An embryonic form of recognition lies in the Global Protection Cluster’s framework, which lists “disinformation and denial of access to information” as a protection risk. However, it treats the loss of access to information mainly as a side effect of disinformation, overlooking the far more common cause: internet shutdowns and communications disruptions." (https://www.accessnow.org/publication/internet-shutdowns-typology-of-harms)