IDN Committee

Whereas, in resolution 01.39 the Board established an internal working group on Internationalized Domain Names to identify the various internationalization efforts and the issues they raise, to engage in dialogue with technical experts and other participants in these efforts, and to make appropriate recommendations to the Board;

Whereas, the internal working group conducted various information-gathering activities, including the posting of a community survey;

Whereas, the internal working group presented an interim report at the ICANN Public Forum held in Stockholm on 3 June 2001, and that report was discussed at the Public Forum, at the Board Meeting, and on ICANN's Internationalized Domain Names web-based public forum;

Whereas, the internal working group presented its Final Report at the ICANN Public Forum held in Montevideo on 9 September 2001;

Whereas, the Final Report identified several policy issues meriting further evaluation and recommended that the examination of these issues proceed in parallel with continuing technical standardization and other preparatory work for the introduction of IDNs;

Whereas, these policy issues cannot be fully resolved until the Internet Engineering Task Force completes work on a deployable IDN standard, but initial work on the policy issues that will arise can and should proceed concurrently;

Whereas, the Final Report also recommended that the Board establish an IDN Committee to coordinate the work of various ICANN supporting organizations, committees, and other groups on the policy issues and to promote timely development of policy recommendations on them; and

Whereas, the Board has considered public comment on the Final Report made electronically and at the Montevideo Public Forum;

Resolved [01.__] that IDN Committee is hereby established under Article VII, Section 1(c), of the ICANN bylaws to serve as a general coordination body for the work on policy issues identified in the IDN Working Group Report and such other policy issues that the IDN Committee shall identify;

Further resolved [01.__] that the IDN Committee shall be responsible for promoting the coordination of the work of the ICANN supporting organizations, committees, and other groups on the policy issues arising from IDNs, as documented in the Final Report, and to promote timely development of policy recommendations on those issues for consideration by the community and the ICANN Board;

Further resolved [01.__] that in its policy-coordination activities, the IDN Committee should seek to ensure that any recommendations are achieved through a bottom-up process, and that those recommendations reflect a wide range of expertise on the different aspects relevant to the issues;

Further resolved [01.__] that the IDN Committee shall be chaired by Director Masanobu Katoh;

Further resolved that the President, in consultation with the IDN Committee Chair, shall propose, for approval by the Board, representatives to serve on the IDN Committee from the ICANN Board, the Supporting Organizations, the Governmental Advisory Committee, and such other individuals who in his judgment could meaningfully contribute to this effort;

Further resolved [01.__] that the IDN Committee is encouraged to commission panels of volunteer experts from different countries with practical experience in the policy issues identified in the Final Report, and linguistic experts (including experts in non-ASCII character sets and languages not spoken by persons active in current discussions); and

Further resolved [01.__] that the IDN Committee is requested to present its initial work plan, schedule, and proposed budget at the third ICANN annual meeting, to be held in Marina del Rey in November 2001.