[EURO-Discuss] ICANN Regions

[Roberto Gaetano]

My initial comment and Wolf's reply are below for reference.

I believe that we need to keep our present problem, i.e. the wish of our
Armenian ALS to participate to EURALO, separated from the broader issue of
the redesign of the ICANN Regions.
The attached document addresses the latter, in the framework of a wide
consultation, at the end of which we all knew that the likelihood of some
changes were minimal.
The problem is that, in order to change the composition of the Regions,
ICANN has to mediate among a large number of elements, and the main
consequence of this change would be to potentially affect the composition of
the Board.
However, if we act pragmatically, we can solve our immediate problem, plus
other potential problems that we might in other RALOs, like ALSes in
territories that belong politically to one Region but are geographically in
a different one. I am thinking at cases like French Polynesia, for instance.
I was unable to find on our web site the rules and regulations for EURALO
membership, but I assume that we say somewhere that ALSes must be located in
the ICANN Region of Europe. I don't know what is the formulation of RIPE or
CENTR, but I assume that they have it broader, because they both, while
being regional organizations for ASO and ccNSO (actually, this is not 100%
accurate, but never mind the details), accept members from other regions.
What has to be clear is that we cannot modify rules that will have an impact
on the representative bodies. In other words, the geographical distribution
of the Councils and of the Board representatives has to be the same. For
instance, EURALO will not be able to elect a representative from Armenia to
ALAC. But I am pretty much convinced that we can change the restrictions on
the Regional Organizations in order to be more inclusive, for instance
introducing wording about commonality of interests, cultural links,
geopolitical situation (and in this case the CoE status can be mentioned),
or other.
In the early days, we were paranoiac about capture, so the initial set of
rules were pretty strict. Now that ALAC is approaching 200 members, we can
rely on a solid structure, that can act as safeguard against possible abuse
or misuse.
Of course, we might have to be careful about the wording: we have to avoid
that one country has ALSes in more RALOs. Maybe we need to define a sort of
associate membership. Also, we can check what is the situation with .IR,
that is in both APTLD (see http://www.aptld.org/member/ir-irnic) and CENTR
(see http://www.centr.org/member/ipmirnic).
Further ideas can be developed after reading this document:
http://ccnso.icann.org/applications/geo-region-application.htm.
Anyway, I am not saying that we have a solution that is quickly
implementable without problems, but I maintain that we have an easier path
if we take this pragmatic approach and postpone the general issue of ICANN
Regions to later. I also believe that if we act in coordination with the
Supporting Organizations that have their membership split in Regions we can
have more arguments for changing the regional split.
In simple words, if we go to the Board showing that the Caucasus (Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia) is in Europe for the ccNSO (CENTR), ASO (RIPE) and
ALAC (EURALO), and nowhere in the Regionally-driven subsets of ICANN it
appears in Asia, Australasia and Pacific Islands (AP), we might have a point
next time that the ICANN Regions fall under review (the rule is every 5
years, even it has been disregarded in the past).
We might want to involve the other RALOs in this discussion, as they might
have similar issues and/or other ideas to solve the problems.

Enough for today,
R.




> >
> >The main reason why ICANN has regions is for Board elections. And the
> >ICANN Board will never use an arbitrary designation of regions, to avoid
> problems.
> >So, it will stick as much as possible with the UN Statistics
> >definition, with minor adjustments only in the case of some powerful
voice
> yelling loud.
> >If this happens, we find ourselves with things like some Pacific
> >Islands being in Europe.
> >
> >This said, other components of the ICANN community have some
> >flexibility. In the chat we discussed the status of Armenia. Well, if
> >you go to the site of the Armenian NIC (https://www.amnic.net/) you see
> >that it is a member of RIPE (as Armenian addressing organization) and a
> >member of CENTR (as Armenian TLD). Why cannot ALAC have the same
> >flexibility in the allocation of an ALS to a RALO? This is a fight worth
fighting,
> IMHO.
> >
> >Of course, there are limitations. If you look carefully at the ccNSO
> >and ASO, you discover that the composition of the Councils and the
> >election of the ICANN Board members do indeed respect rigorously the
> >geographical distribution. Moreover, the ccNSO site shows the national
> >ccTLD members as belonging to the ICANN Region (see
> >http://ccnso.icann.org/about/members.htm), even if then they have the
> >flexibility to join a regional organization that is not the one to
> >which they belong geographically.
> >
> >I have always insisted on the fact that we have great potential for
> >outreach and collaboration with ccTLDs: the regional organization is
> >one example where this communication can be extremely useful.
> 
> (WL) The rubbery and unrewarding discussion on ICANN's regional model is
> always reaffirming where the model comes from and why it's stupid and
> inflexible as it is ... and when nothing changes, it's getting boring. In
fact, we
> drafted a EURALO statement on the regions (what was in vain again -- see
> attachment) where we highlighted other European perceptions (like CoE and
> other models) and special cases like Armenia etc. IMO, it would bring NO
> harm to the ICANN model to provide a certain flexibility for special cases
to
> choose and decide about their regional affiliation ...
> 

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