ICANN: Initial Report on the Protections for Certain Red Cross Names in all gTLDs – Policy Amendment Process

Purpose: Obtain community input on proposed recommendations for amending prior consensus recommendations with respect to the reservation protection of ICRC (the International Committee of the Red Cross), IFRC (the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies), and Red Cross National Societies, as instructed by the GNSO Council. This is the International Governmental Organizations – International Non-Governmental Organizations (IGO-INGO) Working Group’s Initial Report.

On 3 May 2017, the GNSO Council reconvened a Policy Development Process and tasked the IGO-INGO Working Group (WG) with reviewing prior consensus recommendations that were adopted by the Council, but later returned back by the ICANN Board for further consideration as it related to prior Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) advice. The WG held its first meeting on 14 June 2017.

The potential policy changes relate to certain specific names of Red Cross National Societies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, as initially documented as Recommendation 5 in Section 3.1 of the PDP Working Group Final Report [PDF, 644 KB]. The GNSO Council directed the WG to consider the following proposed amendments:

1. The full names of the now-191 Red Cross National Societies and the full names of the International Committee of the Red Cross and International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies are to be placed into Specification 5 of the Base gTLD Registry Agreement, with an exception procedure to be created for cases where the relevant Red Cross Red Crescent Movement organization wishes to apply for their protected string at the second level;
2. In placing the specified identifiers into Specification 5 of the Registry Agreement, this should apply to an exact match of the full name of the relevant National Society recognized within the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (in English and the official languages of its state of origin), the full names of the International Committee of the Red Cross and of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (in the six official United Nations languages) and a defined limited set of variations of these names; and
3. In considering the proposed amendment, account is to be duly taken of the matters noted during the GAC–GNSO facilitated discussion at ICANN58 as well as of the GAC‘s public policy advice to reserve the finite list of names of the Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies, as recognized within the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, in all gTLDs.

It is important to note that the scope of the work of this Reconvened WG did not extend to the issue of protecting the acronyms of the International Committee of the Red Cross or the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (i.e., ICRC, CICR, CICV, MKKK, IFRC, FICR). While these specific acronyms are the subject of inconsistent GAC advice and prior GNSO policy work, they are not covered by the Reconvened WG‘s recommendations.

Section 5, P. 19 of the Initial Report provides a comprehensive description of events before and leading up the Reconvened WG‘s formation. It contains two sections that cover the process background and then the fundamental issues that underpin the current policy discussions.

1. Initial Report on the Protections for Certain Red Cross Names in All Generic Top-Level Domains Policy Amendment Process [PDF, 450 KB]
2. Finite List of Red Cross Identifiers for Proposed Reservation [PDF, 1.45 MB].

GNSO Project Page with links to all work products: https://gnso.icann.org/en/group-activities/active/igo-ingo