From December 10th to 12th, the 2024 ICAO Aviation Security Week and Ministerial Conference was held in Muscat, the capital of Oman. Dr. Huang Jiefang, the Zhou Gengsheng Chair Professor at the Institute of International Law and Governance of Wuhan University, was invited to attend and deliver a speech.

The conference coincided with the 80th anniversary of the signing of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention, 1944) and the 50th anniversary of the issuance of Annex 17 - Security to Aviation. Over 800 participants from more than 70 countries attended the event. The conference adopted the Muscat Declaration, which covers various aspects of aviation security in the current situation, emphasizes the importance of cybersecurity, and advocates for countries to ratify the Convention on the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Relating to International Civil Aviation (Beijing Convention, 2010) and the Protocol Supplementary to the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft (Beijing Protocol, 2010).

In his speech, Prof. Huang introduced the relevant provisions of the Beijing Convention targeting cyberattacks, pointing out that the convention expands the definition of "aircraft in flight" to include "signals, data, information, or systems necessary for the navigation of aircraft". In this way, some cyber attack behaviors are regarded as acts of sabotaging aviation facilities and will be punished accordingly, so as to deter and respond to cyber attacks against civil aviation.