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The 5 regions used by ICANN to ascertain geographical representation have made me uncomfortable for several reasons. One of these is that they are not nearly of equal size in whatever way you measure that size (inhabitants, internet users, size of territory). A few days ago a revised version of the allocation of countries and territories has been put up on the ICANN website. It will be discussed in Montreal. http://www.icann.org/montreal/geo-regions-topic.html If I understand it, Bermuda and the Falkland Islands are now in Europe. The same is true for some French territories. Please, note that the European Union does think that some of these countries/territories are in Europe and others not. (http://europa.eu.int/abc/maps/index_nl.htm) The reason seems to be the citizenship of the people who live there. I don't know about Bermuda and the Falklands, but the two former Dutch colonies, which are also in 'Europe' now, elect their own parliament etc. They are independent politically. The Dutch government does not speak for Aruba or the Netherlands Antilles. It fights with them occasionally. Is this change to the regions not a step back to colonialism? Anyway, what I would really like to see, is a more balanced regional division. Look at the 'facts' (population and territory) of the present regions within ICANN: Asia-Pacific 3798 15,568 Africa 840 11,698 Europa 728 8,875 Latin America-Caribbean 531 7,964 North America 319 7,699 (Source: http://www.prb.org/pdf/WorldPopulationDS02_Eng.pdf) The proposed changes don't influence these numbers much as they concern mainly small islands. There is no improvement in them, as far as I can see. Some may find it important to take the number of internet users into account. Here are some data (for what they are worth): Europe 190 Asia/Pacific 187 US/Canada 183 Latin America 33 Africa 6 Middle East 5 (Source: http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/) This would suggest 3 regions not 5: America 216 Europe, Africa 196 Asia/Pacific/Middle East 192 [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index] |