[soac-newgtldapsup-wg] A comment on the use of category 722 (Small Island Developing States) as a criteria

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Colleagues,

In this note I simply wish to point out a weakness in one of the 
proposed criteria, specifically the reference to category 722, one of 
the area or region codes created by the UN Statistics Division (UNSD) 
and utilized by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN 
DESA) within the Development Policy and Analysis Division (UN DPAD).
I used Wikipedia as a per-capita GDP source for all 51 entries in 
category 722. Singapore, with a per-capita GDP of $57,000, ranked at 
the top of this list, and Haiti, Sao Tome an Principe, Solomon 
Islands, Guinea-Bissau, Comoros and Timor-Leste formed the bottom six 
entries, all with per-capita GDP less than $1,500. Note that I was not 
able to easily find the per-capita GDP for the Northern Mariana 
Islands (though it was this entry which caused me to look more 
carefully at category 722), the United States Virgin Islands, Niue, or 
the Netherland Antilles.
I propose we remove the reference to category 722 for several reasons.

1. It is absurd to use a list containing both Singapore and Haiti.

2. ISO 3166 code points have been allocated to all of the category 722 
entries, and few have domestic, or diaspora populations sufficient to 
motivate a public interest claim for allocation of a scarce resource 
-- support in the 201x application round.
3. Some of the delegations in the IANA root to ISO 3166 allocations in 
category 722 already function as gTLDs, e.g., Niue, Tuvalu, Samoa, and 
in general, further awards to operators of repurposed ccTLDs, or 
awards to replace repurposed ccTLDs, are not in the public interest.
To find the definitions I used for categories 199 (Least DC), 432 
(Landlocked DC), and 722 (Small Island Developing States), please see:
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm

This note represents about 2 hours of time.

Eric