Is ICANN helping to subvert its own governance model?

[Rafik Dammak]

Hi Milton,

We had some informally in the last days about this article and topic and I
proposed to draft letter to ICANN Board and I would add CEO to ask for
clarification. If we have volunteers to start drafting asap.

Best,

Rafik


On Tue, Nov 11, 2025, 04:59 Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu> wrote:

> 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
>
> <https://internetgovernance.org>
>
>
>
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