International Relations News 37th Meeting of the ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers 37th Meeting of the ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
- 15/03/2010
The 37th meeting of the ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers was held on 6-13 March 2010, in Nairobi, Kenya. As usual, the 36th meeting of the GAC - ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee was held concurrently. The GAC comprises representatives from governments of countries and public authorities from regional economies and intergovernmental organisations, and covers public policy matters related to the ICANN's activities. The GAC currently has 88 members, who jointly encompass more than 90% of Internet users geographically, and 12 observers (see GAC composition). 36 members and 3 observers took part in the meeting.
The main items on the agenda at the 36th GAC meeting were: international domain names (IDNs) in country top domain codes, adoption process of generic top level domains (gTLDs), reception process of Expressions of Interest (EoI) for new gTLDs, morality and public order-related issues in creating new gTLDs, aspects related to enforcement of the law on abusive DNS use, security and stability of the DNS system, aspects regarding the execution of the Affirmation of Commitments (AoC) signed by ICANN and the US Department of Commerce (DoC), and GAC operational principles (see GAC Communiqué in Nairobi).
Portugal is represented on the GAC by the President of The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC).
Portugal was one of the first countries to become a GAC member. It has taken part in this committee since its 2nd meeting, which was held on 25th May 1999, slightly over two months after the 1st GAC meeting. Portugal was represented from 1999 to 2008 by the President of the FCCN – Foundation for National Scientific Computation, who asked to be replaced at the end of 2008.
Since it was set up in 1998, ICANN has made the way it operates more open and transparent, based on the participation of multi-stakeholders and a large number of public and private organisations, and non-governmental organisations of different types and from different continents and countries, taking on a global character, becoming one of the clearest examples of the new organisational concepts that are deeply rooted in the paradigm of the online society that the Internet itself has brought us, together with its social values of freedom, openness and inclusion.
The different stakeholders that participate in the ICANN include: civil society and Internet users, governments and governmental agencies, enterprises and entrepreneurial associations, the technical Internet community, Internet service providers, registrars, registries and registrants.
The ICANN is one of the most advanced global organisations in terms of involving stakeholders at the global level and one of the organisations that has most tangibly introduced a new model of open online global governance (see geographical map of Board members, map of meetings held, root servers map).
The 28th Meeting of the ICANN took place in Lisbon in March 2007 with an opening session chaired by the Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, José Mariano Gago (see intervention by Minister José Mariano Gago).