Middle East Strategy Working Group

Middle East Strategy Working Group
Status:	Closed
Issue Areas:	Middle East Engagement
Date Established:
Charter:	[ WG Charter]
Workspace:	[ Community Wiki]

The Middle East Strategy Working Group (MESWG) was a Working Group called by ICANN in December 2012 to develop an engagement strategy for the Middle East affirming the need to:

• foster two-way engagement between ICANN and the broader Internet community in the region;
• build strong and competitive domain name industry in the region; and
• promote multistakeholder Internet governance mechanisms in the region.

These goals were divided into three strategic focus areas, namely:

• DNS security and stability;
• Domain name industry; and
• Internet governance ecosystem.

Background

ICANN's leadership in 2012 was demonstrating an interest in the internationalization of the organization and globalization of engagement. Following ICANN 44 in June 2012, the African community put together a working group of community members to develop a regional engagement strategy. In the last few months of 2012, ICANN held several meetings at events, such as the Arab IGF, IGF, and ICANN 45 in Toronto, and met with Middle East stakeholders regarding ICANN engagement in the region.

After these meetings, ICANN 44 called for the creation of a Working Group to develop an engagement strategy for the Middle East, and invited members of the community and constituency to join the effort. Twenty-two individuals from 11 countries expressed interest, and come from a variety of areas, such as the governments, private sector, civil society, technical community, and academia.

Geographic Scope

ICANN’s Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) at the time had the following countries as part of the Middle East region: he Middle East: United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. Nevertheless, during the consultations that led to the creation of the working group, stakeholders from North Africa expressed interest to become part of this process, and noted that the strategy should address common issues across all Arab countries.

This group of countries fell within two different ICANN geographical regions (Africa and Asia Pacific), hence they are part of different regional structures such as APRALO and AFRALO for At-Large, and APTLD and AFTLD for ccTLDs. They also fell within the scope of three Regional Internet Registries: RIPE NCC, AfriNIC and APNIC.

Tasks

The tasks of the working group were to:

• develop a three-year (2013-2016) regional engagement strategy for the Middle East that focuses on the needs and priorities of the region within the scope of ICANN's role;
• identify specific strategic areas, along with the problems and challenges of each area and their corresponding recommendations and actions;
• provide a preliminary plan of action, which includes activities, timelines and priorities;
• ensure a true multi-stakeholder approach in both the development of this strategy and its implementation;
• work with ICANN on developing a one-year implementation plan

Members

Twenty-two individuals from 11 countries expressed interest in joining the working group for the 2013-2016 strategy.

Stakeholder Group	Name	Affiliation	Country
Private Sector	Charles Shaban	AGIP (Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property)	Jordan
Private Sector	Khaled Koubaa	Google	Tunisia
Private Sector	Zahid Jamil	Jamil & Jamil	Pakistan
Technical Community / Academia	Alireza Saleh	IRNIC	Iran
Technical Community / Academia	Marwan Radwan	PNINA	Palestine
Technical Community / Academia	Nabil Bukhalid	ISOC Lebanon Chapter	Lebanon
Technical Community / Academia	Sarmad Hussain	University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore	Pakistan
Technical Community / Academia	Siavash Shahshahani	Sharif University of Technology	Iran
Government	Fahd Batayneh	NITC (National Information Technology Center)	Jordan
Government	Moez Chakchouk	ATI (Agence Tunisienne d'Internet)	Tunisia
Government	Abdulrahman Al-Marzouqi	TRA	United Arab Emirates
Government	Christine Arida	NTRA	Egypt
Government	Iftikhar Shah	MoITT	Pakistan
Government	Imad Hoballah	TRA	Lebanon
Government	Manal Ismail	NTRA	Egypt
Government	Mohammed Al-Noaimi	TRA	Bahrain
Government	Qusai Al-Shatti	CAIT	Kuwait
Civil Society / Academia	Amr Elsadr	University of Tromsø	Egypt
Civil Society / Academia	Ali Almeshal	ISOC Bahrain Chapter	Bahrain
Civil Society / Academia	Fouad Bajwa	Internet Research Project	Pakistan
Civil Society / Academia	Rafik Dammak	University of Tokyo	Tunisia
Intergovernmental / International Organization	Hania Sabbidin Dimassi	UN-ESCWA	Lebanon
Civil Society / INGO	Sofie Maddens	Internet Society	Belgium

Hania Sabbidin Dimassi and Sofie Maddens were a later addition, invited to join MESWG during the Arab MIG meeting in Dubai.

Outcomes

MESWG developed the Middle East Strategy Report, which was published on May 10, 2013. After it was ready and agree-on, the working group decided to execute the outcomes of this document over phases as annual implementation plans.

July 1, 2013 was the starting date for the year 1 implementation plan. The ME Strategy Implementation Plan for Year 1 provided the following deliverables:

• Inauguration of the Task Force on Arabic Script IDNs (TF-AIDN) during the 2nd Arab IGF in Algiers in early October 2013. TF-AIDN focused on technical issues and solutions to promote the deployment of Arabic IDNs.
• Inauguration of the Middle East DNS Forum, along with a program committee, which was formed in to develop the program and agenda for future forums.
• Organization of the first Middle East and Adjoining Countries School on Internet Governance (MEAC-SIG).
• Signing of two agreements on ICANN 50: the regional DNS Entrepreneurship Center (DNS-EC) and the MoU with the Qatari Ministry of Information and Communications Technology.

Year 2 implementation plan started on July 1, 2014 with the goal to start the regional DNS Entrepreneurship Center (DNS-EC) with the aim to strengthen the DNS industry in both the Middle East and Africa. Another goal was to conduct a market study to identify the challenges and opportunities of the domain name industry in the region. Also in the work plan was the second edition of the Middle East DNS Forum, the MEAC-SIG and the Middle East DNS Forum.

An ICANN Blog Post made in 2016 shows that the DNS-EC was successfully established.

The study on the DNS market in the Middle East was also released. It contained qualitative and quantitative data on the state of the domain name industry in the region at the time, and offered recommendations for how to continue expanding this industry.

The Task Force on Arabic Script Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) was still working and achieving results, like the development of Arabic Script's Label Generation Ruleset (LGR).

The Middle East DNS Forum became an annual event, Also, the Turkey DNS Forum was established, which was held in 2014, 2016 and 2017.

MEAC-SIG also became held annually,, except in 2024. A local program was launched in Pakistan in 2015, which also occurs annually (except for 2017).

Group Closing

At ICANN 55 in Marrakech, the working group presented the achievements of the 2013–2016 strategy to the community and discussed how to build on them. The consultation was continued after the meeting, and the community recommended that a new group be formed to develop a regional strategy for 2016–2019. In early June 2016, the Middle East and Adjoining Countries Strategy Working Group (MEAC-SWG) was announced.

Country code top-level domain. Determined by "ISO 3166-1: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country codes".

Internet Governance Forum

Internationalized Domain Name