[NCSG-Discuss] Is ICANN helping to subvert its own governance model?

[Mueller, Milton L]

I want to make sure that everyone in NCSG has read this substack article by Alice Munyua of Kenya. Although it deals with IP address policy not DNS policy, the issues it raises apply to the entire ICANN ecosystem.
The TL;DR is that ICANN has supported an African organization that is rooted in national governments and is proposing to set up an overlay governance structure for AFRINIC that disempowers the community members and gives governments veto power over policy decisions. As Alice writes in her post,

The RIR system; AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, RIPE NCC manages the internet’s addressing infrastructure globally. These organisations work because they are built on community trust and technical independence from governmental control. The system works because the same principles apply everywhere; bottom up policy development, community self governance, insulation from political direction. If those principles do not apply in Africa, if intergovernmental organisations can draft bylaws externally, coordinate electoral outcomes, and substitute political endorsement for member ratification then the precedent affects the global system.
Here is a link to the post: https://substack.com/home/post/p-177968365

Alice poses some useful questions that ICANN's management needs to answer:

We need

  *
Transparency about ICANN’s full involvement in developing CAIGA [including] the scope of participation and financial support.
  *
Explicit assessment of CAIGA’s compatibility with ICP-2 and the RIR governance principles that apply to RIPE NCC, ARIN, APNIC, and LACNIC.
  *
Answer to the direct question: Would ICANN support similar governmental restructuring of RIRs in other regions? If not, justification for why different standards apply to African internet governance.
  *
Commitment that any AFRINIC governance reforms will be developed through AFRINIC’s own community processes, not external drafting with political endorsement mechanisms.



Dr. Milton L Mueller

Georgia Institute of Technology

School of Public Policy

[cid:5f9094ad-0639-4d6d-b928-c06fecf79589]<https://internetgovernance.org>


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