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Work Stream 2 – Recommendation for a Framework of Interpretation for Human Rights

Work Stream 1 of the Cross-Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) recommended, and ICANN subsequently inserted in its Bylaws, a new Core Value stating that decisions and actions of ICANN shall, "within the scope of its Mission and other Core Values, respect[] internationally recognized human rights as required by applicable law." This Core Value did not come into effect until Work Stream 2 developed, and the ICANN Board approved, a Framework of Interpretation within ICANN.

The high-level framework outlines how the bylaw language should be interpreted and applied to ensure that ICANN accomplishes its Mission consistent with its core values and operates within law applicable to its operations.

The implementation of this recommendation is co-owned by ICANN org and the community, with ICANN org supporting the community's discussions and activities.

Rec Description Implementation Status
3.1

The CCWG-Accountability WS2 recommends the adoption of the Framework of Interpretation it developed for the ICANN Bylaws dealing with Human Rights, which can be found in Annex 3.

Org implementation: Completed in Q2 2022. See Implementation documentation.

Community implementation: Completed in Q2 2024. Implementation documentation in progress.

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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."