The Middle East Strategy (MES) December 13, 2013

Fahd A. Batayneh

Stakeholder Engagement Coordinator, Middle East ICANN

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What is ICANN?

+ Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers + Headquartered in Los Angeles with hub offices in Istanbul and Singapore + Engagement centers in Beijing, Brussels, Geneva, Montevideo, and Washington DC + Three annual meetings with no restrictions on attendance + Online presence at http://www.icann.org/

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What Does ICANN Do?

+ Coordinates the names and numbers identifiers of the Internet; i.e. Domain Names and IP addresses + Provides Technical Operations via the IANA functions + Administrating some responsibilities of the DNS root servers + Allocation of Internet Numbering + Policy development for Internet Names and Numbers in a Bottom-Up, Consensus Driven, Multi-Stakeholder model

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Current Projects/Activities at ICANN

+ New Generic Top Level Domains (New gTLDs) + 100s of names to be introduced into the root + Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) + Top Level Domains in native languages + Capacity Building Initiatives + Regional Strategies + Promoting DNSSec and IPv6 deployment + Deployment of secondary root-server instances

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What is ICANN doing for the ME Region?

+ Middle East Strategy Working Group (MESWG) + Formed in late 2012 under ICANN ’s Coordination + Covers the 22 Arab states, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan + An ad-hoc working group consisting of 21 experts from 11 countries of the region + A 3-year strategy + Arab DNS Forum

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Strategic Goals for ICANN’s Engagement

+ Foster two-way engagement between ICANN and the broader Internet community in the region; + Build strong and competitive domain name industry in the region; + Promote multi-stakeholder mechanisms in the region Internet governance

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Strategic Areas of Work

+ Working group has defined three strategic areas to work on: 1.

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DNS Security and Stability Domain Name Industry Internet Governance Ecosystem + More at https://community.icann.org/display/MES/Middle+East+Wor king+Group

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What is the MESWG Up To?

+ Task Force on Arabic Internationalized Domain Names (TF AIDN) + Formed in October and announced during the AIGF-II + 20 experts varying in their expertise (DNS, Linguistics, Unicode …) + The proceedings of the task force can be followed https://community.icann.org/display/MES/TF-AIDN+Work+Space at + Still open for newcomers to join on-board

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… cont. (What is the MESWG Up To?)

+ Task Force on Capacity Building Activities (TF-CBA) + Call open until December 21 + Wiki page CBA+Wiki+Space at https://community.icann.org/display/MES/TF + The window for joining will always remain open to new experts + “Train-the-Trainer” model + Work in progress

ICANN Learn

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Questions?

Thank you [email protected]

http://www.icann.org/