STATEMENT OF THE ICANN AFRICAN COMMUNITY ON ICANN GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS REVIEW
Wednesday 16 March 2011
We, African community members attending the joint AFRALO-AfrICANN meeting held on Wednesday 16 March 2011 in San Francisco, appreciate the work done by the geographic regions review working group and the key questions raised during this exercise.
We do think that there are no international norms to be followed (for example UNDP, ECOSOC, ITU council, ITU BDT, ITU BT, and ITU BR use different norms), and thus the best geographic regions for ICANN will be those that reflect the most the functional, geographic, and cultural diversity of the Internet at all levels of policy development and decision-making.
We also believe that the present ICANN geographic regions fulfill more or less the above diversity requirement.
Africa is a region fighting for unity to promote economic and social development. As such, we think any division of the African continent would jeopardize the efforts deployed to realize this objective and will not meet the community approval. History has divided the continent by language and the actual efforts are for reunification.
With its 54 countries and its cultural diversity (multiple languages, different types of populations, high demography, different political systems, variety of climates and vegetations, etc.) Africa, by itself, is a complex community model in which the members learn to respectfully communicate and live together, in harmony.
Therefore, we recommend keeping the integrity of the African continent as such with all its countries as actually defined in the ICANN geographic region called “AFRICA”.
