UNESCO AND ICANN SIGN PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT

UNCLAS UNESCO PARIS 001680 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: EINT UNESCO SUBJECT: UNESCO AND ICANN SIGN PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT REFTEL: PARIS 1639 ¶1. On December 10, UNESCO and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN),based in the U.S., signed an agreement to create internationalized domain names in non-Latin scripts. This is the first private partnership agreement signed by new Director-General Irina Bokova. ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom was present for the signing, also attended by DCM Engelken and PAO. Under the partnership, UNESCO will provide linguistic expertise to countries who wish to apply to have their top-level country domain names appear in their own scripts. For example, a country like Egypt will be able to convert what currently might read as 'www.mfa.eg' in to a fully Arabicized URL. ¶2. So far, twelve countries have applied to take advantage of this new possibility, with content going live in mid-2010. UNESCO's CI and Culture sectors will work together with their networks of experts to ensure the accuracy of these top-level domain names. This partnership, which has been in the works for almost two years, also directly aligns with UNESCO's core missions of access to information, freedom of expression, and linguistic diversity. Also of note is that this is ICANN's first signed agreement with an international organization. ¶3. For almost ten years, the National Telecommunications and Information Association (NTIA) has had an exclusive agreement with ICANN for regulating internet domain names and addresses. On September 30, NTIA agreed to widen this agreement to include members of ICANN's governmental advisory committee, to the satisfaction of other member states and stakeholders and bolstering ICANN's commitment to "one world, one internet, everyone connected." ¶4. Comment: While this agreement is the first signed partnership agreement with a private corporation during Bokova's tenure so far, it's important to note that UNESCO also entered in to a content agreement with Google last week (reftel). We are pleased that UNESCO is actively trying to build a stronger private-public network and we will continue to try to identify appropriate U.S. partners. KILLION