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The Working Group also produced an Interim Report that focused on general principles, specific considerations and some of the critical issues that it intended to address in its Final Report document. It (1) offered a review of the underlying history, objectives and general principles of ICANN’s Geographic Regions Framework; (2) raised a number of fundamental strategic questions for further community consideration; and (3) expanded on a number of specific issues identified in the Initial Report that were likely to be addressed in the Final Report.

ALAC draft statement

The ICANN Geographic Regions review is of great importance for At-Large because all its organization and its work are based on the 5 ICANN regions (composition of ALAC, distribution of RALOs, allocation of ALSes, etc.).

That is why since the Working Group initial report, ALAC expressed its great interest in always considering the main reason of the introduction of the geographic regions concept in ICANN, which was to ensure geographical diversity in the Board composition.

Also, ALAC strongly believes that we should always seek and support broad and informed participation reflecting the geographic, cultural and linguistic diversity at all levels of policy development and decision making in ICANN as stated in the ICANN Bylaws.

So, ALAC thinks that any geographic regions review should aim at enhancing the so called diversity    for a better international representation.

It is because any Geographic regions framework is made for a specific purpose that there is no international standard one: ITU uses several frameworks according to the nature of the structure that will use it (for example, ITU Radio-communication has a specific geographic regions system that is used for the frequency (and orbital position) allocation, which is different from the one used for the ITU council for the country representation).

That’s said, ALAC finds that the proposed review does not enhance the diversity and wouldn’t ensure more international representation.

The RIRs model was built on technical considerations having nothing to do with the diversity. It couldn’t be the right model for ICANN. If the actual framework is not perfect, the one proposed is not better for the following reasons:

  • It doesn’t satisfy the request for which the review was initiated.
  • It removes countries from their original regions to which they belong to a different region, far from their lands, with very different language and culture, and a far different level of Internet penetration (Example: Yemen from Asia to Europe)
  • The Asian Arab countries, Iran and Turkey will have almost no chance since they will be competing with prestigious European countries with very high level competences.
  • It creates political tensions since it removes the Islas Malvinas (Falkland island) from Europe to Latin America and Caribbean region.  

The draft final report says that the current framework has created a large number of anomalies without detailing or even mentioning them. We do believe that the proposed one would create more and worse problems at the representation level, as well as at the political one. It will not fulfill the main requirement of diversity for which the geographic regions were created in ICANN.

ALAC would advise that:

  • the current geographic regions framework be maintained
  • any country should be allowed to request for a change from its current region
  • the request for change should bring le country to a region closer to its land

Finally, we can conclude that the review will be a positive one if it reinforces the objective for which the geographic regions were implemented in ICANN. It is clear that the proposal of the working group final report doesn’t bring a better diversity, and thus failed in achieving its goal. ALAC thinks that it is of extreme importance that the review of the geographic regions be done for the benefit of a good international representation, taking into account the interest of all parties.     

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