[NA-Discuss] ICANN Geographic Regions

[Evan Leibovitch]

I have long thought that the ICANN methods for chopping up the world,
both in process and result, have been drug-induced. Even the act of
having the Caribbean put in LAC rather than NA seems strange. Under its
regs, Puerto Rico and Guam are in NA but Jamaica is in LAC.

Many global bodies, from the UN to FIFA, have dealt with the touchy
issues of regional groupings. ICANN should not go anywhere near
re-inventing this wheel, but rather use other well-accepted norms
created elsewhere.


Danny Younger wrote:
> Concern over the proper formulation of the ICANN Geographic Regions has long been a significant part of At-Large structure-building considerations with the earliest recommendations dating back to the 2001 proposal of the At-Large Study Committee to create a Central/West/South Asia Region (CWSA)
> comprising India (.in), Pakistan (.pk), Afghanistan (.af), Kazakhstan (.kz), Uzbekistan (.uz), Kyrgyzstan (.kg), Turkmenistan (.tm), Tajikistan (.tj), Sri Lanka (.lk), Maldives (.mv), Iraq (.iq), Iran (.ir), Israel (.il), Syria (.sy), Jordan (.jo), Lebanon (.lb), Palestine Territories (.ps), Kuwait (.kw), UAE (.ae), Yemen (.ye), Oman (.om), Bahrain (.bh), Qatar (.qa), Saudi Arabia (.sa).
>   
Of course, in such a structure Israel -- a significant global player in
hi-tech in general and one of the more least-censored societies in that
region -- would be aggressively silenced. (In most international
groupings it's usually included in Europe.)

My point here is not the resolution of in what region to put Israel, so
much as to demonstrate this problem as an example of the kind of
political wrangling in which ICANN has absolutely no business engaging.

ICANN has enough on its plate without having to deal with the
significant politics behind these issues, and is well advised to use
existing standards created elsewhere rather than create its own. The
inclusion of Israel in the Mideast region by the 2001 study committee,
only lays bare that group's ignorance of the political nuances at play.
This is not an indictment of the group so much as an illustration of
ICANN's (fully understandable) unsuitability to create such boundaries
on its own.

It's bad enough that ICANN touches into politics in regards to ccTLDs
(ie, the intensive lobbying regarding ".eh"). We should be involved in
such politics as little as is absolutely possible. It should be up to
other bodies, not ICANN, to determine whether (for instance) Abkhazia
requires its own TLD. Same goes for defining regional divisions; we're
not the only ones needing to deal with the shifts in international
influence.

> The recent recommendations of the Westlake Consulting Team charged with the current ALAC review follow in this spirit by recognizing that ICANN’s geographic regional structure is not well aligned with global population distribution and is increasingly unrepresentative of world-wide Internet usage, leading Westlake to recommend increasing the number of NomCom appointees to the ALAC by two members, both of whom would be from Asia.
>   
The analysis of this that we presented at Paris found this approach
horribly flawed, not in the least by its exclusive use of unaccountable
appointees -- with no mandate for community accountability -- to address
the issue of regional imbalance. If countries are under-represented then
fix the regions. Adding two NomComms without any other regional change
comes across as the weakest possible answer to this question. If AP
needs to be split, then split it.

(It's my personal hope that as At-Large matures that an effective ALAC
can eventually be 100% representative. I fully accept that right now
such level of maturity does not yet exist. But adding NomComms to ALAC
without any corresponding ALS elected/accountable reps seems a step
backwards.)

> As any change in the total number or composition of ICANN geographic Regions will impact ICANN's At-Large Structures, we formally request that an at-large representative from each current ICANN Geographic Region be included in the Board-appointed community-wide working group to review the structure of ICANN's present Geographic Regions and related issues.
I believe we ought to take a position that ICANN has no business
re-inventing this wheel, and should find an existing
diplomatically-created regional split that we can live with.

Like ALAC, ICANN itself needs to focus on its own resources on policy;
volunteers are already spread too thin. Expending such scarce resources
on political issues -- in which ICANN has even less experience or
credibility than usual -- is an  unnecessary diversion and needless
vision creep.

- Evan