Recommendations for Managing IDN Variant Top-Level Domains

Recommendations for managing Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) variant labels for top level domains (TLDs) have been developed by ICANN organization. The relevant materials along with these proposed recommendations are being published to seek community feedback.

The community has identified a need for IDN variant TLDs; however, the ICANN Board resolved on 25 September 2010 that "no variants of gTLDs will be delegated ... until appropriate variant management solutions are developed."

Subsequent work by ICANN organization and the community led to the identification of two issues: (i) there is no accepted definition for variant TLDs, and (ii) there is no 'variant management' mechanism for TLDs.

For the first issue, the Root Zone Label Generation Rules (RZ-LGR) Procedure was developed with the support of the community and adopted by the ICANN Board on 11 April 2013 for implementation. The Procedure has been implemented and RZ-LGR has been developed for six scripts, and other scripts are being added as their proposals are finalized by the relevant script communities.

For the second issue, ICANN organization has undertaken a detailed examination to propose a set of recommendations for variant management mechanisms for TLDs, which will be finalized based on the community input. The finalized recommendations will be presented to the ICANN Board, anticipated in March 2019. At that time, the ICANN Board will be requested to consider these recommendations to allow for implementing IDN variant TLDs.