A critical analysis of international cybercrime complaint mechanisms: proposing a unified global convention for cybercrime complaint procedure

Abstract

The swift progress of digital technology has outrun the ability of current international legal frameworks to address effectively the threats of cybercrime. While the 2001 Budapest Convention on Cybercrime represented an important step towards global cooperation, its sparse adoption and patchwork nature have led to jurisdictional gaps that are exploited by cybercriminals, as Brenner points out, producing legal "black holes" in the world's enforcement terrain. This thesis aims to critically analyse international and regional legal frameworks, as well as national legislation, to identify their procedural inconsistency and incapability of global application. Overall, doctrinal research methodology through descriptive and critical analysis has been applied to analyse the viability of a common global convention on cybercrime complaint procedures and stresses the imperative need for an internationally centralized cybercrime reporting system. The researcher has found that the primary hurdles to the possibility of such a convention, e.g., geopolitical tensions, opposing national interests, and disparities in technology between industrialized and developing nations, are explored extensively. Moreover, this research has determined the significance of public-private partnerships in enhancing cyber resilience, an argument presented by Schjolberg and Ghernaouti-Helie (A Global Treaty on Cybercrime: A Contribution from the Global Alliance for Cybercrime Prevention. In light of this, the General Assembly's adoption on 24 December 2024 in New York by resolution 79/243 of the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime further attests to the growing agreement on the importance of wide-ranging international cooperation in this area. This research concludes the significance of embracing a harmonised worldwide legal remedy in terms of a process of victim redressal and prescribes effective lines of action tending towards its implementation, enforcement and sustain-ability in order to reach a robust as well as concerted world cybercrime paradigm.