Blog Available-ICANN84 in Muscat, Oman: Addressing Community Concerns

[farzaneh badii]

Thank you Andrea.

So they considered Freedom House (scored 24
<https://freedomhouse.org/country/oman> out of 100) AND Human Rights Watch
and they still said naaa Oman is where we are going to meet with no real
engagement plan with the locals.
This is not just about protecting the attendees of the meeting. This is
also about how safe the locals are going to feel to participate at an ICANN
forum and interact with the participants.
Now the question that we must ask is are we by participating benefiting the
government, giving it more legitimacy, are we bringing stability and peace?
Are we contributing to the Omanis civil society knowledge of Internet
governance? When the expat community is so controlled (which in oppressive
countries it usually is) then it would be really hard to do these things.
Talking from experience, when living in a country with a terrible human
rights and Internet freedom record, usually we were very excited when
conferences brought foreigners inside the country that was otherwise very
isolated. It did give us a chance to learn more about their work. It gave
them a chance to see the country (however limited experience) But at the
same time it was very controlled, we didn't even know where they were
meeting, the government did not really publicize the event and our
journalists did not have many opportunities to attend those conferences.
Also it was a bit of a security risk to attend those conferences. So We
can't just say we protect our own. If we do that we might as well go to a
resort and have a meeting. Can we have plans in place for some outreach?
for creating safe spaces for people to attend or at least know about it? Do
we know what the journalists and exiled activists or those inside think? I
don't know if the Board has considered all those questions.



Farzaneh


On Thu, Sep 26, 2024 at 1:27 PM Andrea Glandon <andrea.glandon at icann.org>
wrote:

> ICANN Blog just published regarding ICANN84 in Muscat, Oman:
> https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/icann84-in-muscat-oman-addressing-community-concerns-26-09-2024-en
>
>
>
> *Andrea Glandon*
>
> Policy Operations Sr. Coordinator
>
> Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
>
> *Skype ID:*  acglandon76
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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