with the internet shutdown, classes have stopped without any warning. This endangers people’s lives in terms of education, healthcare, and much more.” C IVILIAN INTERNET MUST BE BETTER PROTECTED DURING WAR AND CONFLICT Internet shutdowns have become a recurring feature of armed conflict, weaponized as deliberate acts of warfare and control, and deployed when civilian connectivity is most essential and their human cost is most devastating. Yet far greater legal, humanitarian, and scholarly attention is needed to establish robust protections for civilian internet access during hostilities. 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 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. Internet shutdowns are also increasingly associated with atrocity crimes and grave human rights abuses. In 2024, when a staggering total of 103 shutdowns were conflict-related, 72 shutdowns were linked to grave human rights abuses and violence. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has previously considered disruptions to telecommunications as evidence of state policy in its analysis of crimes against humanity, yet accountability for shutdown-related abuses remains rare. Given the central role that connectivity plays in enabling civilian functions such as access to food or banking, and the provision of humanitarian assistance, it is no longer tenable, nor is it acceptable, to treat internet access as a peripheral concern concern. Protecting civilian digital infrastructure and internet access requires a multi-stakeholder approach involving states, international bodies, private actors, and civil society. Ensuring and restoring access demands resilient technical solutions, political commitment, and sustained financing. Internet access should be integrated into mediation, ceasefire, and peace negotiations, with parties pressed to restore services under their control, while governments and humanitarian actors and their donors must fund alternative access mechanisms such as satellite links, WiMAX, and e-SIM technologies, among other solutions that restore connectivity for the wider civilian population. In the longer term, building resilient, secure, and independent digital infrastructure that can withstand future disruptions must be central to post-conflict reconstruction. The protection of civilian internet access must be codified and enforced, recognizing that digital infrastructure is now a fundamental element of civilian protection under international law.