[NA-Discuss] ICANN Geographic Regions

[Danny Younger]

Let's consider ICANN's current North American Region:

American Samoa -- in Asia/Pacific
Guam -- in Asia/Pacific
Northern Mariana Islands -- in Asia/Pacific
United States Minor Outlying Islands  -- in Asia/Pacific
United States 
Canada 
Puerto Rico -- in Caribbean region
Virgin Islands, U.S. -- in Caribbean region

Yes, it looks weird as part of the region is on the other side of the world but I think we need to get down to fundamental principles in our analysis.  Ultimately I think that the local internet community should be the ones self-selecting in which ICANN region they wish to reside.

The difficulty, of course, arrives when contemplating the creation of new regions.



--- On Fri, 8/29/08, Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org> wrote:

> From: Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org>
> Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] ICANN Geographic Regions
> To: dannyyounger at yahoo.com, "NA Discuss" <na-discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org>
> Date: Friday, August 29, 2008, 11:59 AM
> 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