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Review Teams' Composition

Review Teams are the leading actors of the review process, and responsible for the methodology, quality and timeliness of the reviews. They are independent from the ICANN Board and staff, and are composed of:

  • Community members representing SO/ACs
  • Independent experts
  • Ex-officio members

Community members of Review Teams are to be appointed by Affirmation-mandated Selectors among a pool of independent volunteers who have been granted endorsement by the SO/AC of their choice.

The following chart [PDF, 212 KB] represents the requirements of the Affirmation in this respect, for each of the Affirmation Reviews:

Process of Selection

11 January 2010 – In line with the Affirmation of Commitments, ICANN publishes a Call for Applicants [PDF, 86 KB], for the Position of Volunteer Review Team Member, which contains specific requirements for the composition of the different Review Teams.

The Call for Applicants [PDF, 86 KB] is a permanent call. However, interested volunteers are invited to consult application deadlines before submitting their candidature.

As required by the Affirmation, community members representing the relevant SO/ACs in Review Teams are selected by Affirmation-designated Selectors from pools of volunteer candidates. Candidates first need to identify the SO/AC they wish to represent during the process and their candidatures should be endorsed by SO/ACs.

The Affirmation-mandated Selectors first establish the number of positions on the team available for each SO/AC. They then determine the composition of the Review Teams in line with a set of requirements and criteria. At this stage of the process, only candidates who received endorsement from relevant SO/ACs are considered for membership. The Selectors elect the members of the Review Team who match their objectivity and independency expectancies, while taking into account geographical and gender factors in accordance with ICANN's commitment to reflect diversity within its constituencies and community.

Accountability and Transparency Review Team Composition

Security, Stability and Resiliency of the DNS Review Team Composition

Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review Team Composition

WHOis Policy Review Team Composition

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."