Dear Friends

A wise roar of an old and experienced lion!. I think we should take this 
suggestion from Sam very serious s it makes perfect sense to me and I 
would like to see the comments and suggestions from the others in the 
list. If you don't like it, good, if you don't like it and suggest an 
better alternative, even better.

Yours

Klaus


On 8/3/2016 3:25 PM, Sam Lanfranco wrote:
> I have stayed relatively quiet in the ICANN and Human Rights (HR) 
> discussion. I will make my position known here, in very brief 
> language, not so much as to record my position but to bring some 
> perspective to the possible way forward.
>
> ICANN is a not-for-profit entity pledged to operate in the public 
> interest. It goes without saying that this includes respect for Human 
> Rights, but it may be worth having ICANN say it on the record, but 
> leave it to others to judge ICANN’s record with regard to Human Rights.
>
> What do I mean by that? What do I suggest? My thinking is that ICANN 
> can pledge to consider the Human Rights aspects of all of its DNS 
> Internet governance policies and implementation, but (BIG BUT) ICANN 
> stops short of incorporating anything like a Human Rights check list, 
> a Human Rights score card, or internal ICANN human rights performance 
> monitoring, as it pursues policy development. Leave that to 
> constituencies as they struggle within the multistakeholder policy 
> development process, and leave the assessments of ICANN’s record to 
> outside third parties for whom Human Rights are central to their own 
> mission, vision and remit.
>
> Why do I suggest this split between an ICANN pledge and outside 
> monitoring? There is a legitimate fear that internalizing the 
> monitoring process would malfunction at several levels. It could 
> become unwieldy, it could become time consuming, it could become 
> self-serving, and it could become a venue for proxy fights around 
> other issues. Let ICANN and its multistakeholder policy making 
> process, and its organizational implementation processes, be open and 
> transparent, and let’s hold ICANN accountable on the Human Rights 
> front by assessing it from outside ICANN.
>
> This should not be a struggle over whether Human Rights are in or out 
> of ICANN.
>
> Sam L.  NPOC/CSIH
>