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ALAC STATEMENT ON THE ICANN proposal to USE A DRAW FOR PRIORITIZING NEW gTLD APPLICATIONS

(First draft)

ICANN proposed to use a draw for prioritizing new gTLD applications in which the IDN applications will be given a priority. 

The ALAC expresses its great satisfaction for the prioritization of the IDN applications because it promotes linguistic diversity on the Internet, which will enhance Internet accessibility to those whose language doesn’t use the Latin characters and make them use the Internet in their daily life; this serves the public interest. 

The new gTLD program showed that very few applications originated from developing economies, especiallyAfricaand Latin America & Caribbean regions. It is our view that this is the result of poor effort of outreach from ICANN regarding the new gTLD program as well as the applicant support availability in the regions where those people live. 

Therefore, and also because all the existing gTLDs are from developed countries, the ALAC finds it unfair to put the applications from developed and developing countries on the same level of priority. Giving the later a priority will also promote the diversity, enhance the accessibility of the developing economy citizens to Internet and serves the public interest. 

The ALAC believes that prioritizing applications from developing economies will not have a big impact because the total number of the concerned applications (Africaand LAC regions) is 41 only, which represent less than 2.13% of the total number of applications. 

Nevertheless, the At-Large Advisory Committee understands the worries of those who are concerned about giving priority to applications from developing countries that are applied for by rich people from the north, even if the same case applies for the IDN applications too. 

A case by case treatment should be undertaken for applications from developing economies to find out those genuinely applied for by developing country citizens. 

The ALAC thinks that rebalancing the Internet domain industry (lingual and geographic) and the consideration of the public interest should be the main criteria for any prioritization. IDN and developing economies applications deserve to be on the top of the list.