Yokohama's resolution.

[Raul Echeberria <raul@xxxxxxxxxx>]

This comment has the only purpose to clarify that the Board of ICANN has
never approved the criterion to group the "dependent
territories" as they are named in the current proposal, with their
"mother countries" as they are also named in the
proposal.

I have checked in the ICANN's website and I can't find a formal document
from the ICANN's staff with a statement in relation with this topic. The
only reference that I found is a comment from Mr. Andrew McLaughlin
during the Board's meeting in Yokohama, but after this comment the
ICANN's board approved the following resolution:

"Resolved [00.64] that the staff is directed to assign countries to geographic regions on the basis of the United Nations Statistics Division's current classifications of "Countries or areas, codes and abbreviations," as revised 16 February 2000, and "Composition of macro geographic (continental) regions and component geographical regions," as revised 16 February 2000."

And it is contradictory with the grouping that was suggested by Mr.
McLaughlin since in the lists referred this criterion is not applied. i.e
Aruba  #533 is included in Caribbean #021 and therefore included in
Latin America and the Caribbean #419.

Therefore, we can certainly say that ICANN has not approved in any time a
resolution related with the grouping of the dependent territories in the
sense that it is suggested in the antecedents of the current proposal.

Due to the above comments, this proposal imply a very important change in
the current definitions and there is not any justification in the
resolution that is being proposed, for this "grouping"
criterion. 

I think that if the ICANN Board is interested in promote this big change
in the current definition, this change should have a good justification.
Since the justification doesn't exist, it is not appropiate to approve
the resolution that is being proposed, at least by now.


Raul Echeberria
LACNIC 
CEO