WS #150 Language and inclusion – multilingual names

Summary

This panel discussion focused on the challenges and opportunities of implementing Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and promoting universal acceptance to foster a more inclusive and multilingual internet. Experts from organizations like ICANN, UNESCO, and national telecommunications regulators shared insights on the progress made and obstacles faced in this area.

The panelists highlighted that while IDNs have been introduced over a decade ago, their adoption remains low at only 1.2% of global domain registrations. Key challenges include technical issues with universal acceptance across applications, lack of awareness among users and decision-makers, and the need for more robust policies and standards. The discussion emphasized that achieving true multilingual internet access requires coordinated efforts across stakeholders, including governments, businesses, and technical communities.

Several initiatives were discussed, such as ICANN’s work on universal acceptance, UNESCO’s promotion of digital inclusion, and national efforts to implement Arabic domain names. Panelists stressed the importance of raising awareness about IDNs and their benefits, particularly in preserving local languages and cultures online. They also noted the need for more empirical studies on the economic benefits of multilingual internet access to encourage adoption.

The experts agreed that while progress has been made, significant work remains to be done in areas like improving user experience, addressing security concerns, and ensuring consistent support across platforms and applications. The discussion concluded that achieving a truly multilingual and inclusive internet requires ongoing collaboration, technical innovation, and policy development at both national and international levels.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The importance of internationalized domain names (IDNs) and universal acceptance for digital inclusion and a multilingual internet

– Technical and awareness challenges hindering widespread adoption of IDNs

– The role of governments, regulators, and other stakeholders in promoting IDNs and universal acceptance

– The need for a holistic, global approach to creating a truly multilingual internet

– Efforts to increase awareness and technical readiness for IDNs and universal acceptance

The overall purpose of the discussion was to explore the current state of internationalized domain names and universal acceptance, including progress made, ongoing challenges, and potential solutions to create a more inclusive and multilingual internet.

The tone of the discussion was generally informative and collaborative, with panelists sharing insights from their various perspectives and experiences. There was a sense of both optimism about progress made and recognition of significant work still needed. The tone became slightly more urgent towards the end, with calls for greater prioritization and strategic planning around multilingual internet initiatives.

Speakers

– Moderator: Panel moderator

– Bhanu Neupane: Program manager for ICT and sciences and open access to scientific research at UNESCO

– Theresa Swinehart: Senior vice president global domains and strategy at ICANN

– Walter Wu: President of internet dot trademark organization limited, Universal acceptance ambassador

– Hesham M. AL-Hammad: Domain Names Director at the Communications, Space, and Technology Commission of Saudi Arabia

– Manal Ismail: Chief expert internet policies at the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of Egypt, Egyptian government representative in ICANN’s governmental advisory committee

– Sarmad Hussain: ICANN representative (specific role not mentioned)

Additional speakers:

– Fouad Bajwa: Audience member asking question (role/expertise not specified)

– Abdulmenem: Works for Telecom Regulator of Egypt

– Jamal Shaheen: Audience member asking questions (role/expertise not specified)

Expanded Summary: Panel Discussion on Internationalized Domain Names and Universal Acceptance

This panel discussion brought together experts from UNESCO, ICANN, and national telecommunications regulators to explore the challenges and opportunities surrounding Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and universal acceptance. The discussion aimed to address the current state of IDNs, progress made, ongoing challenges, and potential solutions to create a more inclusive and multilingual internet.

Importance of IDNs for Digital Inclusion

Panelists unanimously agreed on the crucial role of IDNs in fostering digital inclusion and preserving cultural diversity online. Bhanu Neupane from UNESCO emphasized that IDNs are essential for cultural diversity and digital inclusion. Manal Ismail stated that IDNs are vital for continued internet expansion and reaching the next billion users. Hesham M. AL-Hammad highlighted the importance of IDNs in preserving local languages and culture online, while Theresa Swinehart from ICANN noted that IDNs allow users to engage online in their own languages and scripts.

Current State and Challenges in IDN Adoption and Implementation

Despite their recognized importance, IDNs face several significant challenges:

1. Lack of awareness: Walter Wu pointed out the limited knowledge about IDN availability and benefits.

2. Technical issues: Sarmad Hussain highlighted problems with universal acceptance of IDNs across systems.

3. Script complexity: Hesham M. AL-Hammad discussed the challenges of managing variants in scripts like Arabic, where a single word can have multiple valid representations.

4. Low demand: Manal Ismail noted the slow uptake of IDNs in many regions.

5. Infrastructure readiness: Hesham M. AL-Hammad used an analogy to illustrate the complex interdependencies in implementing IDNs: “Sometimes we have the planes, but the airport is not ready. But still, this is a fact, and we need to work with it. So we need to work in parallel.”

Walter Wu provided specific insights into the Chinese market, noting that while IDNs have a 20% market share in China, challenges remain, such as the need for better email address support and improved user experiences.

Efforts to Promote IDNs and Universal Acceptance

Panelists shared various initiatives to promote IDNs and universal acceptance:

1. UNESCO’s efforts to advance digital inclusion and multilingualism.

2. ICANN programs to enable IDN awareness and universal acceptance, including Universal Acceptance Day, which involved over 80 events across 40 countries.

3. Saudi efforts to develop tools and applications for Arabic IDNs.

4. Chinese registrar community’s push for IDN usage and promotion.

Sarmad Hussain provided a technical explanation of how multilingual email addresses work, emphasizing the progress made in this area. He also noted growing awareness and adoption of IDNs and email addresses in local languages over time.

Role of Governments and Stakeholders

The discussion emphasized the critical role of governments and multi-stakeholder collaboration in promoting IDNs and universal acceptance:

1. Manal Ismail argued that governments should lead by example in promoting IDNs.

2. Hesham M. AL-Hammad stressed the need for collaboration between regulators, industry, and academia.

3. Bhanu Neupane highlighted the importance of including universal acceptance in national internet policies, noting that many governments still lack this context in their policies.

4. Sarmad Hussain advocated for a multi-stakeholder approach to address technical and policy issues.

Unresolved Issues and Future Directions

Several unresolved issues were identified:

1. Increasing demand and uptake of IDNs in many regions.

2. Addressing ongoing technical challenges with universal acceptance across systems.

3. Managing the complexity of script variants, particularly for languages like Arabic.

4. Lack of empirical studies on the economic benefits of a multilingual internet. Bhanu Neupane mentioned a single report suggesting $9 billion in potential economic benefits but emphasized the need for more substantiated research.

The panel suggested several action items:

1. UNESCO and ICANN partnering to prepare policy briefs for member states on universal acceptance.

2. Continuing efforts to raise awareness about IDNs through events like Universal Acceptance Day.

3. Working on improving technical solutions for IDN implementation and universal acceptance.

4. Encouraging governments to include universal acceptance in national internet policies.

5. Using IDNs as a criterion for measuring digital transformation readiness, as suggested by Hesham M. AL-Hammad.

An audience member raised a question about country codes in IDNs and how they are chosen, highlighting the need for awareness at different levels of implementation.

Conclusion

The panel discussion provided a comprehensive overview of the current state of IDNs and universal acceptance. While progress has been made, significant work remains to achieve a truly multilingual and inclusive internet. Manal Ismail’s statement, “We owe it to those who need it so we should continue pursuing this forward slowly but surely,” underscored the moral imperative and long-term commitment required. The discussion emphasized the need for ongoing collaboration, technical innovation, and policy development at both national and international levels to overcome the challenges and realize the full potential of IDNs.

Moderator: with another mic, I hope it’s better. OK, so language and inclusion. As many of you know, multilingual internet was one of the Tunis agenda items back in 2005. Language plays a crucial role in fostering cultural diversity and promoting digital inclusion. And to address language inclusion in the digital age, we should consider how individuals and communities can have equal opportunities to benefit from digital technologies, regardless of their language or how and where they access these technologies. Today’s panel will focus on domain names, which are crucial to the functioning of the internet. I’m joined by a panel of experts to discuss ongoing collaboration and efforts aimed at ensuring all domain names, including internationalized domain names and email addresses, are treated equally and can be used seamlessly across all internet-enabled applications, systems, and devices. We will also explore the roles of various stakeholders in advancing universal acceptance of domain names and promoting internationalized domain names to support a more inclusive and accessible internet. So let me take a couple of minutes to introduce our speakers. Here in the room, I’m joined by Hisham Al-Hammad, Domain Names Director at the Communications, Space, and Technology Commission of Saudi Arabia. CST is the organization that operates Saudi’s top level. domains ascii.sa and thearabic.saudia. Also in the room with me Teresa Swinehart, senior vice president global domains and strategy at ICANN and many of the key programs and initiatives we’re going to touch upon today actually are being you know run and spearheaded by Teresa’s team. Joining remotely we have Manal Ismail. Manal is chief expert internet policies at the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of Egypt. Manal is also the representative of the Egyptian government in the governmental advisory committee of ICANN. Also remotely we have Walter Wu, president of internet dot trademark organization limited. Walter is also a universal acceptance ambassador and joining shortly or maybe has joined already is Banu Nupayn, program manager for ICT and sciences and open access to scientific research at UNESCO, has been with UNESCO for over 23 years and brings significant experience. Experience with internet multilingualism and language related technologies and initiatives. So all right so I think Banu has already joined so let me let me start with Banu. Banu UNESCO plays an essential role in promoting digital inclusion. You yourself have been involved in many multilingualism and language-related initiatives. So maybe you can tell us a little more about those initiatives and how they contribute to the fulfillment of WSIS agenda and the sustainable development goals. Can we unmute Banu? Banu, are you able to speak? Banu, I think you can speak now.

Bhanu Neupane: Yes, can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Okay, sorry about that. It’s okay. Sorry, Chair, I think you’ll have to repeat your question one more time so that I can start from the beginning. Sorry about that. No, that’s fine. So it was about UNESCO’s role in promoting digital inclusion through the various initiatives you’ve been involved in. If you can tell us a little more about those initiatives and how they contribute to fulfillment of WSIS goals and agenda. Thank you so much, Chair. extremely pertinent question. As you know, UNESCO is an intergovernmental organization and we’ve been playing a very decisive role in advancing digital inclusion through targeted initiatives that align with the WSIS agenda and support the advancement of sustainable development goal as large. For WSIS, UNESCO leads Axellein C3, C8, and I think this session will pretty much fall in the bracket of C8, C9, and C10. And we are also responsible for the e-science component of C7, which is one of the ICT application for this one. For STG goal along the same line, we are working for STG4, STG9, and STG16, in which primarily looks at peace, justice, and strong institution. And access to information also falls within this particular STG. So that goal is pretty much advancing on something that we are working on, digital inclusion. One of the key focuses of UNESCO is universal access to information and knowledge. And this primarily ensures that digital transformation promotes equity, inclusion, and multilingualism. So these are the three areas that we are focusing on at. The commitment dates back to 2003 recommendation. There was a recommendation that member state had in fact agreed in 2003, just about the time when WSIS was also starting, when they thought about agreeing on a recommendation concerning the promotion and use of multilingualism and universal access to cyberspace, which emphasizes on importance of linguistic diversity. and inclusivity in the digital world. Quite interestingly, in 2023 UNESCO recognized something that I think this audience primarily understands and it co-opted universal acceptance

Moderator: as one of the pillars that it would accomplish

Bhanu Neupane: while implementing this recommendation. So since then, we are pretty much focusing on and working primarily with ICANN to see how the domain names can be internationalized and how universal acceptance can be brought to the doorstep of member state. How can they start making their internet universal acceptance ready? That’s one. The other thing that we are also working is building digital and media literate and where we are primarily taught empowering and enhancing the capacity of member state in understanding that the internet must be utilized in more than one languages. And we are in fact, we’re working on that. Of course, UNESCO is also in its cradle is the ethical AI and its inclusivity. This is where the recommendation of ethics for artificial intelligence comes to fore. We also have something that we are working and in advancing ICTs for education and primarily working in the area of open solution which sensor grosser we actually take on board three things that one talks about open educational resources. We also talk about openness of data. And now we have also started to talk about free and open source software and working more and more like in language technologies and trying to see that whether or not this language technologies will also. becomes a common fare to the member state and our stakeholders at large. And of course, we are also custodian of the 16.10.2, which primarily empowers member state to make information as the cradle on which development processes move forward. So I’ll stop there, and perhaps I’ll come back to these points in a bit. Over to you, Chair.

Moderator: Thank you. Thank you, Banu. That was very comprehensive. So let me move to Teresa. Teresa, ICANN community has introduced internationalized domain names at the top level of the root of the DNS more than a decade ago. So how do you think IDNs have helped foster a more inclusive digital landscape, and what are the key challenges that continue to hinder their spread?

Theresa Swinehart: Thanks, Pahir, and thanks for organizing the panel and for everybody who’s participating. As the IGF knows, for a truly connected world, you need to have a unified, interoperable, and a system that’s accessible to all. But as users of the internet, we all want to be able to engage and communicate in the languages that we speak, in the scripts that we use, and in the methodology that we want to use, the length of something, a domain name, right to the, or left to the dot, around all that. We want to do that in our day-to-day lives, and there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to do that while we’re online in the virtual world. Audio from the room is not clear, so let’s, maybe you can try this mic. Is that better? Yes, excellent, excellent. Oh, hold it like this, okay. We got it? Okay, excellent. By the end of this meeting, we’ll all be very trained in how to do this. So in this regard, ICANN has a role, we have a limited role within our mission with relation to internationalized domain names and tables and a lot of the work that is, no, not working. Thank you. Is that better? Is that working? Excellent. Okay. Okay. So where I was was that we have a limited mission and a responsibility around the space and we’re working with the community on it. But we also work with many of the partners and other entities on how to enable both awareness around internationalized domain names and universal acceptance and then those that play a role in enabling universal acceptance more generally. And many of you are in the room here as well and participating. So as you know, internationalized domain names are important in the way that we help make the Internet multilingual and inclusive. For those of you who are not familiar, it essentially means it enables somebody to use a domain name in the local language or script. For example, Arabic, Chinese, or Cyrillic. And with this introduction more than ten years ago, we’ve seen many, many language communities around the world coming online. Part of the challenge, though, is an awareness that they can communicate in their own language or in their own script. And so with that, we’re still in the early days of multilingual DNS and as you’ve noted, it’s been about a decade since IDN top-level domains were first introduced. Some of the challenges, though, that are existing around this is overcoming the geographic or linguistic barriers, the generation of local content, the enabling of technical skills and capacity development. These are all critical for enabling the usage around this and that in turn has an impact on economic growth, independence, and the minimizing of resilience on others. So a key goal in enabling this is actually what’s referred to as universal acceptance. That is the ability for the technology, the platform, to accept the script or the length of what is to the right or the left of the dot in the communication methodology. And it means that all Internet applications and systems treat all top-level domains in a consistent manner. This is essential for the continued expansion of the Internet and it provides a gateway to the next billion Internet users in a way that will make it more meaningful for them. But we’re not there yet and progress has been made, but there’s still gaps. For instance, testing shows that only about 11% of the top 1,000 global websites can accept international… email addresses and just 22.2% of email servers support them. So these challenges highlight the urgent need to look at how to address universal acceptance in the partnerships that we can enable with governments, businesses, any entity around that. All the actors developing applications and operating services online are encouraged to ensure their systems are updated to support all domain names and email addresses. And this alignment will not only promote a digital landscape that’s unified, but it will have a ripple effect on encouraging people to utilize local content and engage in their own languages. So within ICANN, as Bahair noted, we have a team that’s dedicated to identifying and making important software fixes to allow for universal acceptance. My colleagues online, Sarmad, Seda, Pitanan, are experts in this, and as we go into more detail, more than happy to engage in those conversations. As noted, we’re also working with the broader ICANN community to ensure awareness around this. And with that, we are now in our third year of, I believe it’s the third year, yes, of the Universal Acceptance Day, which is held on or around the 28th of March in both 2023 and 2024. And in this year, we had over 52 events in 47 countries. We will be hosting it again, but in partnership with our colleagues from UNESCO, which we’re looking forward to very much in 2025, and have already received many applications from interested parties to participate from around the world. So as we move closer to enabling the ability to engage in your own language, we’re also moving closer to opening up our next round of new top-level domains in 2026. This will be an important opportunity for universities, governments, businesses that wish to apply for a top-level domain in their own language or their own script to participate and to apply for that, and thus enabling even more inclusivity in the world. So with that, Bahar, I’ll turn it back over to you, but thanks for the opportunity.

Moderator: Thank you, Teresa. And on the UA Day, it may be worth noting that several UA Day events will be held in this region as well, including one in Saudi Arabia in partnership with the CST. So, okay, let’s move to Walter. I’ll come to you now with, you know, your significant experience with the implementation of IDNs, specifically the Chinese names. What do you see as the potential value of IDNs in promoting local businesses and communities? And if you can tell us more about this experience and the challenges you’ve encountered. I hope you can unmute yourself. Got it.

Walter Wu: Thank you. Actually, I’m very glad to got this opportunity to share kind of development status in China about the IDN market. And I will have a self-introduction before I at the very beginning for this part. Actually, I’m from a registry of Chinese IDN, Daoshanbiao, means trademark in Chinese. As a co-founder of the Daoshanbiao registry personally, I’m very grateful for the new GTLD program of ICANN, because it gave us an opportunity to do some innovative attempt for launching a dedicated TLD to trademark holders. Shangbiao is this Chinese character word, means trademark in English. Compared with the traditional TM or R mark, it creates the best awareness for the customer that is a trademark. So the key value for us to choose Shangbiao as the TLD name to operate is the trademark identify function of these two characters. Shangbiao not only permit the registration for registrar holding a trademark right, but Daoshanbiao registry verify the trademark right of registrar. And the registrar name has to match their trademark and brand name. This service focus on the Chinese-speaking region. It provides opportunity for brand owners to create an exact match domain name with their brand name and post the Chinese. And the second part, I will share some market status of Chinese overall internationalized domains. By the end of Q2, 2024, the number of overall ID and GTLD globally is around 408,000. The total number of Chinese IDN is 347,000. Chinese IDN gets the market share of 85% of the global IDN. .wangzhizaixian means web address, means online, shangcheng means shop, gongsi means company, shangbiao means trademark. And also, shouji means mobile phone, a top Chinese IDN TLD. Those six Chinese IDN TLD get around 64% of the global IDN market. And next part, I will talk about the value for IDN for the Chinese customer or the Chinese communities. The new GTLD program and overall IDN development give us the opportunity to implement a trust domain solution for end-users like enterprises and organizations. Most of the organizations use local Chinese name. In English IDN system, the registrant must use translation, abbreviation, pronunciation symbol, we call pin, that’s a kind of a symbol for pronounce the Chinese character. That actually makes the domain name are not easily remembered and recognized. It also easily generate efficient website since the domain name cannot easily be distinguished by the internet users. For brand owners in Chinese-speaking community, the domain name exactly same with the brand name in Chinese brings high value for online direct-to-customer marketing. Not only local brands need the IDN, actually the multinational, they also need the IDN in China. There are several examples for the Chinese IDN by the registered by the multinational, like Starbucks, actually they register their Chinese brand name, Starbucks, actually they register their Chinese brand name, and TESOL, and TESOL, they register Tiansuo, you know, dot trademark, they register Vantime names. Because in China, a lot of customers may not easily remember the English name. I don’t have the exact statistic, but I guess over 90% of Chinese consumers can now spell right for T-Salt or Starbucks. So a lot of multinationals will localize their brand when they enter China market. All of those companies have a Chinese local name. Before the Chinese IDM program launch, they can only use their English brand name and register their domains. Since the customer may not remember and spell right for the domain names, it will be a big challenge for those brand customers to launch their official website. And last, I will also share the kind of difficulty of IDM implementation in Chinese. Actually, overall speaking, lacking the overall awareness of IDM is the biggest challenge for the internationalized domain names. Without the awareness, because not a lot of registrants very actively use and promote that. Part of the reason is they met the UA challenges. Browsers is always the most important UA issue. Although in the last couple of years, the browser issue has been dramatically solved. But unfortunately, recently, we also meet another UA issue. Because Safari, after the iOS upgrade, they do not support the Chinese IDM right now. So it’s like always, we met all kinds of challenges about the UA. Beside the browsers, actually, search engine, EAI, and hyperlink for the social media is also the several key issues. So that’s a major difficulty that we face. think, you know, but in the ideal development in China. So thank you very much.

Moderator: Thank you, Walter. And perhaps we’ll come back to you in the next round of questions. Maybe you have some solutions to share as well. So let’s come back to the room. Hisham, so Saudi, of course, and Saudi Nick and the team at the CST, you’ve been in the forefront of advocating for the introduction of IDNs, specifically the Arabic domain names, and promoting their use in web, email, and various other applications. So could you tell us more about this journey, and what were the biggest challenges where you are now, and so on?

Hesham M. AL-Hammad: Thank you, Bahir, for inviting me to this session, and I am happy to be with the distinguished guests and speakers, and thank you for all to attending this session. As you mentioned, maybe Saudi, represented by Saudi and IC, started early to introduce the Arabic domain names. And the first start was in maybe 2004, with a cooperation with GCC, the Gulf country, and also with the Arabic League. And based on this, they developed a pilot project, and this pilot project is used to identify the aspects that need to be developed to be ready for the introduction of IDNs when it’s introduced by ICANN. The Saudi domain names and the Arabic IDN for Saudi domain launched on 2010, with all the thanks for ICANN for their support. And the first maybe domain, Arabic domain names was on the internet, was a Saudi domain name. After that, we start the journey to make sure that these domains will work as expected, and to avoid any challenges that can face the users, and even the registrants. One. One of the major challenges that faced us, maybe you know that the Arabic language is part of the Arabic script. And the Arabic scripts contain many languages. Even it’s used by more than 43 countries. And there is, in the shape of the letters of the Arabic, there is the shapes of the letter is the same between different languages. And even within the Arabic, there is also some kind of variance for the same letter. And this was like a very challenging thing. And we focus on the part related to the registry. We want to make the registration straightforward. We want to avoid any confusion that can occur based on registering specific domain names. So we focus on this kind of variance. And the variance, we can see it, for example, for the English. But it’s solved by protocol, in the protocol itself. Like, for example, Google, it has variance regarding the capital and small. But it’s solved by the protocol. But in Arabic, we have many problems with the variance. For example, if we get the two first words from our organization, which is in Arabic, Hayat al-Atsalat, Telecommunication Commission, this maybe, as a variance, it’s more than 2 million variance. This one, it’s having 2 million variance. And this should be considered. So what we did, and our valuable colleagues and pioneers, they start to develop algorithms which use something called master key. So we have one master key for all the variance. So we can, by registering one domain, we can block all the variance and enable the user to enable any variance for that. The master key even, this algorithm, also save our space, instead of registering the 2 million variance, to avoid anyone to register this domain and make it confusing for them. the users, it will be only using this master key. Again, we face also the problem. This 2 million variance is not based on the language itself. It’s not used, and it’s not practically used. For this, we go to another stage to build a filter. And this filter used to make it to have like four levels. The first level is the must to be allocated, and it’s for reachability. The second one is about desired variance. Then we have not desired variance, and the fourth category is blocked. And this minimize the number of variance by maybe 98%. For example, if we get the name like the holy city, Mecca and Mukarramah, for example, it’s around have more than 3,000 variance. Yes. No, maybe the zoom. For example, for Mecca and Mukarramah, this have maybe around 3,200 variance. The desired variance, it’s only four. So this was minimizing the number of variance that can be enabled. In this situation also, we provide for our registrant the ability to specify what is the desired variance, and they can register it. There is no need for register another domain. It’s considered as a variance, and it have the same specification and configuration that needed for the same domain. Before 2021. We were providing the registration directly. We have a direct registration without fees. After 2021, now we have our registrar. We transmit to the registered registrar model. So in this situation, also, we engage our registrar with us. Now we provide him with the ABI to define the variance, define the desired variance, and give him the ability to enable any variance to enable the Arabic domain. Also, we go a step further, and we work with the email. And we launch, maybe, in early stages, the RASIL, the first one of RASIL in the period between 2010, 2013. And this was launched before the standardization for the international or email address internationalization. And we implemented as, like, do a hack for the Outlook and some clients. And we success in this part. After introducing the AI, we also developed the second phase of RASIL. And we tested with the international emails provider, like Google and Microsoft. And it’s worked fine with success. And our implementation was to find what is the difficulties, what the challenges. It’s like a proof of concept to this part. Again, we face some challenges about the domain. We solve it by the variance. For example, we have the user part before the domain. Also, we’ll have the same situation with the variance. And it should be considered to avoid having the same shape for. for the username for different ASCII code. And this is also one of the challenges that we face. One of the initiatives, even before maybe the universal acceptance started, we also published some reports about the readiness of the browsers and other systems for IDNs. We published it on 2010 and also 2014. To make sure and to show the case that there is a problem with specific providers. This may be our journey, in short, on summary. Maybe the most, if you wanted to talk about it now, the challenges, or make it in the second. OK.

Moderator: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Hisham. This is obviously a very rich journey. And I’m sure lots of lessons learned. So we’ll come back to you to talk about not only the challenges, but maybe some, because you’ve also touched on some of the solutions that you have made to deal with some of the challenges in the applications, emails, and so on. So maybe we can talk further about that. So now I’d like to go to Manal. Manal, you’ve been part of this journey for a long time, since ICANN started working on policies to allow IDNs, CCLDs at the top level, process known as Fast Track and so on. Now, how do you, and then of course, you’re part of the government, part of the regulator in Egypt, who’s also the manager of Egypt’s IDN.Masr. So how do you think national regulators can help foster digital inclusion at the local level, particularly in the DNS area and in collaboration with other players in the ecosystem? So what role can regulators play in that regard? And if you also want to touch on universal acceptance, you can do that, or we can come to that later on. Manal, over to you.

Manal Ismail: Thank you. Behr, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Perfect. Thank you very much, Behr, for the opportunity. And thanks to Saudi Arabia for hosting this year’s IGF and availing remote participation. I’m sorry I was not able to join you in person, but thank you for the opportunity. Multilingual internet is crucial for digital inclusion, as has been mentioned already by other speakers. And a truly multilingual internet is essential for the continued expansion of the internet and the growing of the online population. And it is necessary to have a gate open for the next billion internet users to connect meaningfully to the internet. ICANN has already introduced more than 1,200 new GTLDs, 100 of which. our IDNs. We have around 60 IDN ccTLDs and we started to have mailboxes that are no longer just in ASCII and we have another round of new gTLDs also on its way. Yet the actual number of IDN registrations remains relatively low at 1.2 percent of the global domain name market and its uptake is very slow also and per the EURID IDN world report 2024 only three ccTLDs witnessed notable growth in their IDN registrations over the past year while the majority of ccTLDs experienced minimal or no growth at all with 19 ccTLDs reporting contraction in their total IDN registrations. So this makes universal acceptance a fundamental requirement for unleashing the full potential of IDNs and internationalized email addresses and providing a truly multilingual and digitally inclusive internet. Internet multilingualism is also of strategic importance to governments in accordance with their digital transformation plans and the promise to leave no one behind. They have a distinct role to play in that respect in order to reduce inequalities and bridge digital gaps. So universal acceptance would deploying it on a wide scale would surely benefit government efforts regarding digital transformation and digital and social inclusion where the pandemic here played a way served as a wake-up call to everyone that the internet is not luxury but a basic need. Also preserving culture and advancing digital identity through preserving local languages and encouraging their use on and off the internet equally. Ensuring that government online services reach citizens nationwide and in the official language of the country of course and stimulating the growth of the local IDN market and online multilingual content by increasing competition and innovation, increasing customer choice, availing internationalized email addresses which have been hindering the uptake of IDNs and this is also out of our experience in Egypt and driving the use of local IDNs and email addresses as opposed to Latin-based ones hosted off borders. This also helps increasing internet penetration and bridging the digital divide and promoting digital literacy and facilitating meaningful access to the internet and lastly acquiring future proof systems and applications and an analogy with IPv6 could be drawn here. To the second part of your question regarding government role or NTRA role in making government systems universal acceptance ready. So we are at NTRA working closely with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology being the technical arm of the government to ensure awareness of the issue and provide consultancy through subject matter experts. Establish pilots for proof-of-concept and stress testing. Assist in stocktaking of government’s current systems and applications to ensure they are UA ready. Take into consideration, of course, UA readiness of online government services. Include universal acceptance as a requirement in procurement processes, tenders and purchase orders. Assist in universal acceptance-wide deployment in cooperation with licensed operators, vendors and other stakeholders. Try also with the academic sector to add universal acceptance to the curricula of the relevant students. Collaborate on a regional level to drive adoption and universal acceptance readiness in cross-border platforms. So, there is so much to be done. I cannot claim we have achieved everything yet, but we have a long list of things to do. But again, it’s a win-win for all and I’ll leave this till later. Thank you, Beher. Back to you.

Moderator: Thank you, Manel. So, we’ve heard, I think, from everyone on the panel. So, maybe it’s time to pause and see if there are any questions from the floor, here in the room or online. Any questions? Fouad.

Audience: Hello, this is Fouad Bajwa. I have, you know, the IDN growth hasn’t been as expected and, you know, that’s been discussed. But at the same time, what steps need to be taken before the new round opens up? Because if you haven’t been successful, that successful as compared to the other, you know, English GTLDs. So, what do we need to do? What are the concrete steps that we need to take? And now that we are near the other round, the applicant support program is already open. There could be requests in that from the community as well. So, what are we going to improve going forward in terms of, you know, the adoption of IDNs? And within market competition, do we expect, you know, GTLDs to increase by a significant number? Or is the lack of confidence on, you know, all of those that the GTLDs have already issued? What are we foreseeing in the near future? Thank you.

Theresa Swinehart: Perhaps I could start and then ask my colleague, Sarmad, who’s online. So I think that there’s two aspects. One is awareness that it is possible to utilize one’s own script or have a different length or utilization to the right or the left of the dot. I recall being at some events where you discuss that and there’s awareness that you currently can do it to the left of the dot or to the right of the dot but not having the full experience of using something in a full experience. And I would equate it with the address on an envelope. I can write the address entirely in my language or I have to put some parts that are not in my language. So I think there’s a lot of awareness that needs to occur around that from an information aspect and what that could imply. But then I think that there’s also some very solid technical aspects that need to occur with trainings at universities and things. And that’s where I might ask my colleague, Sarmad, to share a little bit. If I may, Behar.

Moderator: Sarmad, could you try to unmute yourself?

Sarmad Hussain: Okay. Hi. Can you hear me? This is Sarmad. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. So thank you, Behar, and hello, everyone. Just to follow up on what Teresa was saying, that, you know, of course, I think the start of the journey is with creating awareness. Many people around the world still do not know that these options exist in their own languages. And so making them aware of this is key. But then as a next step, when people become aware that they can actually have a domain name for their own business, for example, or an email address for their personal use in their own language and script, next step is for them to acquire that and use that. And we see, obviously, some challenges here which have been shared that, first of all, there is a registrant journey. Actually, as a registrant, you would want to be able to register the domain name of your choice in your local language, for example, and then not just register it, but take it further to host it and deploy it and have an email address against it. And what we see is that that is not always an easy set of steps. So the industry which is working with domain names, obviously, and the tools they’re using, sometimes there is a lack of capacity or lack of support which, I guess, needs to be addressed. In addition to that, even when somebody is able to get their domain name and email address functional, what we see is that some of the applications downstream, for example, social media, other application e-commerce websites, they are not also aware of domain names and email addresses in local languages. We see that with the work which is being done by community, by ICANN, by others, there is now a growing awareness. We see more and more not just awareness, but adoption of domain names in local languages and e-mail addresses in local languages over time. For example, many large e-mail providers, generally globally, also in different countries, are now at least allowing e-mail addresses in different local languages to be able to send and receive through their platforms. There is now also, I guess, more maturation in the browser technology to support domain names. So we see that the effort which the community has actually been putting in over last decade or so is bearing fruit. There is now growing support. We cannot say that we are there, but there is certainly a momentum building up and we are making our way there. We do need to keep working in this area. So back, we’re trying to, I guess, respond to Fawad’s question. We’re certainly well on our way. We see good support, but we need to keep working to create more awareness and more support. Thank you.

Moderator: Thanks so much. Manel.

Manal Ismail: Thank you, Behar. I fully agree with what Teresa and Sarmad already said. It’s surely an awareness thing and wide deployment of universal acceptance. With the awareness, it’s an interesting situation here with the universal acceptance that we need to convince both sides at the same time, the supply and the demand. So there is no appealing product in the market yet to attract demand, nor oppressing demand from the community to trigger supply. So ending up in a unique situation where we need to work on the awareness of both sides at the same time. Also, another challenge is the universal acceptance needs to be widely deployed before it bears its fruits. So there is no use in being UA ready alone. So we need to have concerted efforts to push for the wide deployment. Also, as Sarmad mentioned, some may… not even know that this option exists and this relates again to the awareness. So for users who don’t have a language barrier those are already online and they feel that everything is working fine. For those offline because of language barrier they are taking it for granted and not knowing that there is a solution to their problem. Also the business model may not seem very appealing or pressing at the moment but it’s definitely future proof and opens a new market. So again it’s a multi-stakeholder issue which has technical, strategic, commercial and cultural dimensions and needs the buy-in of everyone and collaborative efforts. Thank you Beher, back to you.

Moderator: Thank you, thank you Manal. And perhaps I’d like to go back to Walter because I mean we’re talking about challenges, we’re talking about awareness and Walter you mentioned that right now 85% of the IDN domains are Chinese so it seems to me that there is demand in China. At the same time you also spoke about some challenges so how do you see the scene in China in relation to challenges and at the same time opportunities? Yes, actually the Chinese IDN community especially the registrar side is currently trying to push the usage of IDN because we think that’s a key part of the increased awareness. Actually promotion of IDN needs to start from the registrar side, that’s that’s my personal opinion, because Internet users cannot get awareness of IDN only when they can see a lot of IDN domain names in daily life, like they can see the IDN domain names in the advertisement, in the enterprise brochure, in their service scene. That service means, for example, a restaurant. Inside of a restaurant, they can publish their IDN name of their restaurant, then every customer in the restaurant can see and get awareness of IDN. Actually, I think the whole industry in China, generally speaking, we all began to examine our promotion strategy. At the very beginning, when we launched the IDN, actually a lot of customers registered the IDN because of domain name investment or brand protection purpose. But now, we see more and more registrants realize the value of IDN. IDN is the most important tool for the direct-to-customer DTC marketing strategy, and it provides a direct link between brands and customers. Moreover, IDN can be a very important tool that can save their cost and enhance the efficiency for their online and offline promotion. For our own Daoshan Bell Registry, we are trying to penetrate to the different industries. We have a good connection with the trademark and brand industry. I think the major purpose for when we connect with the brand industry is we hope to create the motivation of the brand. brand customer. You know, we not only want the customer to register the IDN, but we need to proactively publish the IDN and use the IDN and provide more cases for the registrar. So I think only by more and more brand customers publishing their IDN, then the Internet user can see the real IDN case and gradually they can build the habit to use the IDN.

Walter Wu: So I think that’s what the Chinese community focus on. Thank you.

Moderator: Thank you, Walter. Okay, Hisham, back to you now, because you also spoke to the challenges, but at the same time, Saudi NIC or CST, you’ve done significant efforts in developing tools, applications, and so on. So you kind of provided some of the ingredients of the supply side, but how about the demand side? Do you see demand coming from the local community? I’m talking about Arabic domain names in this case.

Hesham M. AL-Hammad: Thank you, Bahir, and thank you for all the colleagues. As you said that we build the demand, build the supply part, and we provided the things that can minimize the risks that can appear from issuing the Arabic domains. But still, the demand is very low, and I think there is something, first of all, we need to understand that DNS and domain names is part, it’s a component of the infrastructure, and changing in the infrastructure standardization, it’s something that needs time. So for example, even now that DNSSEC is produced maybe 1997, the adoption is still around 25%. to 30% even now after maybe more than 20 years. And there is a continuous improvement for the standardization for DNSSEC to avoid the complexity. The problem with the now we have for example for the IDNs we have a very good and very valuable efforts from the universal acceptance and we see now first we identify the problems we provide the solution there is a technical solution there from the universal acceptance that can solve all the levels that can affected by the domain names. But again still the user experience it’s still very difficult so if I register a domain in Arabic I need to have a hosting most of the hosting need me to add a bunny code not add it with the Arabic language so this is difficult for the registrant. Again if I have a variance I need to add each variance and enable it in the name server. If I want to send my domain name through one of the platforms like whatsapp if I send the email or the domain without adding the protocol it will not be identified as a URL but I need to add the protocol for example HTTP before the domain. When we when I add the HTTP this you have a problem for the bi-direction the HTTP is left to right and the Arabic is right to left so still the experience for the user is not giving the people the like incentive to go with the domain name. And as my colleague Walter from Chinese mentioned that even sometimes we have for For example, he mentioned that Safari, for example, it was Safari supporting the Chinese IDN. Then after the upgrade, the support is not more there. This also flabbing between the support. You can find, for example, a provider supporting the Arabic domain now. Then after a specific upgrade, it will not support it. So there is no stability in this situation. And this, I think, one of the difficulties that face the Arabic domain. Maybe the question from our colleague about the domain, and should we wait to solve the problems before we issue or open another round or this kind of discussion, maybe it’s the philosophy for the chicken before or the egg before. Sometimes we have the planes, but the airport is not ready. But still, this is a fact, and we need to work with it. So we need to work in parallel. We have efforts on the high level from universal acceptance point of view. We need to think about the platforms and how we make it ready and support these ideas. And I think we need to have a step more to think about the protocol itself. Can we have a solution from the protocol itself? I know that it’s very difficult, but we can have a solution. The DNS now is invented before maybe 40 years, and it’s based on the ASCII. Everything is based on the ASCII. Even the computers before using the ASCII, now it’s solved, and we use the Unicode by nature. What about the DNS? DNS was built before 30 years without any security measures, but now we have the DNSSEC. It’s built. The DNSSEC, it’s built but it’s not covering all the issues. We have the DOT, the DOH. Still, we are trying to solve all the problems. Why we not look on this part even from the protocol point of view? Let’s see what kind of solution we can have. We can, there is a lot of… like unlimited records, unlimited flags, that we can use it, reuse it, and see how we can solve the problem. Another levels that we can go, for example, the CDNs, the load balancers, the antiviruses, how they will deal with the other IDNs, and the reachability. For example, if I have a keyboard for Urdu language, and I want to write like Arabic domain with specific words that is in the shape is the same between the two languages, but it’s different in the ASCII code, we should have this kind of reachability. And I think we should solve it from the second level, and even from the top level. So again, I think we are doing, there is an effort, which is move on. And we appreciate the universal acceptance issue. And we have the universal acceptance day that started maybe two years ago. And we see the potential. One thing about the awareness, the difficulties in the awareness that even for the DNS itself, now the graduate people and students, even about the DNS, they don’t aware about it. All the people now and the graduate, they talk about AI. The infrastructure-related topics is not that important now in the university part. So we need to step in this part about the DNS, and also about the IDNs and other aspects regarding even the new GTLDs. Because I faced one of my colleagues, he was thinking that the new GTLD is fishing site. He only understand. only .com and also the two letters. When he see, for example, .services, he think that it’s not a correct domain name. Even, by the way, he’s a technical guy, but he’s not aware about this kind of domain name. So we have a gap in this part. And with collaboration, we can cover this gap. And thank you.

Moderator: Thank you. Thank you, Shem. So obviously, yeah, more awareness is needed. I think everyone agrees on this. Significant efforts are being done, yet more to be done. Now, are there any questions? Yeah, Abdulmenem. Yeah, thank you.

Audience: Thank you, Behr. Actually, I would like, this is Abdulmenem for the record, working for the Telecom Regulator of Egypt. Actually, I would like to add something to my colleague, my brother, Shem, said about the challenges in regards to the use of IDNs. There are, the first thing is that we don’t have many services built upon IDN. It’s one of the challenges. The other challenge that it is related to email addresses. Assume that I have my Arabic email address, and I send an email to Chinese email address. How could the other receiver be accurate that I am Abdulmenem? I am the correct guy who sent this email? We need to have a workaround about this. This fact will affect the use of email addresses that are using IDNs or AI mailboxes. This is the first point. Second point, it is just a comment rather than a question. Awareness is somehow is a public word. It’s an open word. There is awareness difference between the mail administrator inside your organization and there is another awareness for the software companies who make the software used by this organization. The difference is here. For the company who makes, the provider who makes this email software, he needs awareness from day one. But the other side who are consuming this software, whatever he is, entity or organization or person who uses this software, he needs to have release notes about that there is an update for the new version of this email software that supports AI and universal acceptance ready. At this time, me as email administrator, I will ask what is this email AI means? What is UA means? At this time, I could conduct awareness session for them. It is different. We need to go for both ways. Thank you.

Moderator: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to get to your question. You asked the question at the beginning about the email and I want to check if Sarmad could answer this question. Can you repeat the question about the email and the identity behind the email?

Audience: I said that the source email address is Arabic email address, pure Arabic email address. And I sent an email to Chinese mail server who has Chinese email address. How could the receiver who owns this Chinese email address understand or be sure that I am the correct one, I am Abdulmanum who sent this email address? It’s one of the issues. Maybe the answer is that if you are Arabic, you assume that to send Arabic to other entity who are in Arabic, but it’s not the case. Maybe I am a businessman. I wanted to send emails to my organizer outside Chinese, something like this.

Moderator: Thank you. Thank you. Sarmad? Thank you. Can you unmute yourself .

Sarmad Hussain: The way I would understand the question and the possible answer is that, you know, we, in the virtual world we, you know, online world, we, our, I guess, experience is not very different from our real world. When we are talking or communicating in the real world, we are communicating in many different channels in many different languages so when I’m actually speaking to a friend of mine who is local I will talk to them in a local language. But when I’m talking to colleagues who are perhaps not local. I would choose to communicate in a language which we mutually understand. So that’s really what the real world experiences. And that’s, of course, what would be a online world experience as well right when I would want to communicate with my friends and we would see that also in social media. So, you know, it’s not that people write in local languages, because they are part of a community which actually understands that language. But when you’re communicating for example for business across languages different languages, then you choose to switch to a language which will communicate with somebody who doesn’t speak my local language but can understand English. I have a mailbox setup where I actually have an Arabic email address. I also have an ASCII or English email address. I can use the same mailbox to send send an email from either of those email addresses. And if I get a response back to any of those email addresses, it comes to the same one single mailbox. So I can have multiple email addresses all, for example, synchronized or, I guess, pointing to the same mailbox. And that allows me to switch to different languages with reasonable ease. That’s, for example, one solution. Thank you.

Moderator: Thank you, Sarmad. We have another question here in the room. Thank you.

Audience: My name is Jamal Shaheen. Thank you very much for the presentations. That was very insightful. I have a few naive questions. Well, I hope they’re not too naive, but a couple of questions that I’d like to just address. I’m new to this field, so please bear with me. One of the questions that I wanted to address was, how will country codes, how will countries be identified in the different scripts? Will you go for two characters still? Or how will that actually sit? And how will you actually be able to distinguish between country websites and then other GTLDs? And how will that actually play out in the ICANN system? And then another thing that has been really enlightening from this conversation was, in previous discussions with technical community experts, I had the feeling that everything was sorted technically, that this was very easy. It’s just a question of rollout. That, yeah, no, it’s just we need people to be aware and then accept. And now, as I’m hearing the conversation go around here, this is more than there are big technical issues that we still need to address. And I’m trying to put into these stages of awareness, technical issues, policy issues, what are the priorities right now, and so on and so forth. That leads to a third question, sorry. In terms of public administrations and governments, is it just sufficient to mandate that IDNs are in any services that public administrations and governments offer that IDNs… IDNs should be the baseline, and then that’s the way we go. Then we have to have a standard that we have to agree to on the technical side. So I’m wondering which comes first. You talked about chickens and eggs. There’s a whole batch of chickens here, right? That’s the question, sorry.

Moderator: Thank you, Jamal. So there are three questions. The last one, I think I’m going to go to Hisham to answer about the governments and how they mandate use of IDNs. But before that, two questions. One about the country names in IDNs and how those names were kind of chosen. I can start and then Sarmad can continue, and then Sarmad can also tackle the second question about the technical issues, right? So back in the days when country names were introduced in IDNs, the ICANN community came together and agreed on a process of how to select or pick the country names. It’s based on the language scripts, how the country is being listed in the UN, different UN lists and so on. And one of the rules that was put in this process was that only countries with official languages that use scripts other than the Latin script can apply for getting or obtaining their IDN country name. So Arabic-speaking countries, they got their name in Arabic, Russian and so on, in Cyrillic and so on. So that is the first question. Now I’m going to hand it to Sarmad to correct me and then to add more. Thank you, Bar. Could you please also repeat the second question again, just to make sure that I answered it accurately? Yeah, I think the second question was that Jamal said that he thought, or he was under the impression, that technical issues pertaining to IDNs have been already sorted out. from what he’s hearing in this session, there seems to be some serious technical issues yet to be resolved.

Sarmad Hussain: Thank you, Bahar, this is Sharma. So just on the first question, so I think you provided good details. Basically, the criteria used for country codes is the two-letter code, which is available through ISO 3166 standard. And if a country or a territory wants to apply for internationalized domain name, country code, top-level domain, IDNCC, DLD, they can, if they already have an ISO 3166 code, and then for local language, as Bahar said, they could apply for any language, which is the administrative language of that particular country or territory in a script, which is used by the local community. And there is actually a process to apply for it. They can choose any string, some countries use a short name for the country, some could use, others have decided to use an abbreviation. So that is really up to the particular territory or country and their community to decide the particular string they would like. There’s a link in the chat. Please go there, and there are more details available. As far as the technical, I guess, ability or adoption of universal acceptance is concerned, Jamal, you’re actually quite right in assessing that we are well on our way as far as the journey is concerned, but we’re still certainly not at our destination. We are in the process of creating more awareness, creating more adoption, creating more technical solutions. We certainly already have available many solutions, but there’s more to do for all of us. Thank you.

Moderator: Thank you, Sarman. And the third question was, is it enough or is it sufficient for the local government to mandate the use of IDNs and then, you know, everything will be fine, everyone will follow and use IDNs, or is it a little bit more complicated?

Hesham M. AL-Hammad: I think it will be complicated, yeah. But in general, I think going with the last solution always, I think it’s not a choice, especially that if the solution is not mature until now. But sometimes we have it like another, we have like a good experience. We try it this year with the DNSSEC, for example. We didn’t mandate the government. We do a cooperation with the digital government authority, DGA, and they have like a measurement every year. They measure the digital transformation readiness for the government entities. And they have some specific rules. This year, last year, we add two criteria, new criteria with the coordination with them. One is about IPv6 and one about DNSSEC. And we see the effect, but it’s not a must, but it’s like only measuring the maturity. If they didn’t do it, only their maturity will decrease, and you maybe attend before maybe a So, this kind of techniques, I think it’s more valuable, more than make it mandate. About the IDNs, I think we’re still very early in the stages to mandate something about the IDN, but we can promote it using some kind of this kind of criteria to make the accessibility for the user more solid. The point with the IDNs, for example, that it helps the people to identify if it is phishing or not. For example, we have like a national service which is called Absher.sa. It’s like a centralized identification provided by the Ministry of Interior. The Absher is spelling in English. It can vary. For example, you can add two E’s, one E, but in Arabic, it’s very clear. If we use Arabic, it will be more clear for the user that this really is Absher, not another site. So, from this point, we can achieve it. Thank you.

Moderator: Thank you, Hisham. I see Manal’s hand is up. Manal, go ahead.

Manal Ismail: Thank you, Behar. I would like to start from the intervention from the floor. It’s very good to know you’re new to the topic. This is excellent. It means that we’re reaching beyond ourselves. So, it’s always good to know that we have people who are new to the topic. I think governments should lead by example. So, they should start promoting and using the IDNs and resolving universal acceptance issues. But still, I think we need to strategize the issue more. So, it’s not just that we need to implement or deploy. universal acceptance but rather we need to have multilingual internet and we need to have a holistic view of what we want to achieve and we have a global plan because it was very surprising to me to hear that with upgrades we lose the progress we’ve already done. So we need things to be prioritized, institutionalized and maintained so that we continue to progress and not go back. So I think this needs to be a global initiative to have a multilingual internet rather than just talk about the technical part of it. Again we will not know all the problems until we start using IDNs and universal acceptance extensively and like anything else I mean it can be as easy as enabling some libraries and doing the technical part but then it comes with a long list of other issues as Hisham mentioned, security, variants and the list goes on. So in terms of direct implementation it’s not that tough but as anything else it comes with a long list of challenges. The whole thing was built with ASCII in mind and what we’re trying to do now is work around that we need to institutionalize and have it transparent from the end user. So anyway we owe it to those who need it so we should continue pursuing this forward slowly but surely. Back to you Ben, sorry.

Moderator: Thank you Manal. I think we have like a couple of more minutes. Are there any questions or maybe if there are any closing remarks by any of the panelists. So I think from what I’m hearing, it’s a long journey and it’s been a long way. A lot has been achieved, more to be done. And I see Bhanu’s hand is up. Bhanu, I think you will have the final or the last comment.

Bhanu Neupane: Thank you very much, Bahar. Just a few very important thing that I want to raise here is, we are following and then tracking this recommendation that was agreed by the member state in 2003. And perhaps that was the first time ever an intergovernmental process had recognized the importance of multilingual IDNs and of course, the top level domain name. And internet were just starting at that time, like world had very few internet users. And now that has in fact become too large a number. But one of the things that we have identified is every four years, we go back and ask the government to report on this one. Most of the time that they say that, okay, we have allowed different languages to go in the internet, but they never talk about IDN or GTLD. So there is an extremely poor awareness on the part of the decision maker. And then we have also started to realize that many governments or most governments still do not have the context of universal acceptance recognized as part of their internet policy. So this is a major drawback for us to move forward. Perhaps there’ll be a time when reaching out to everyone using internet will become a mainstay for the government and perhaps it will be recognizing. exactly as the data breach that happened several years ago and the GDPR became a mainstream. But actually, something similar like that must come forward so that the government will say that unless a new, say, service provider or an internet regulation around the world are universal acceptance ready, they should be kind of like, something should be done on that one. Perhaps this wouldn’t be part of the global internet, you know, say fraternity in some sense. So I think that this is one thing that we have been very much observant about and we are now in a partner with ICANN to do exactly that. Primarily, three things that we want to do. One, that we are trying to prepare a policy brief targeting the member states around the world to bring their understanding of universal acceptance differently. There are not many examples that, okay, we have been asking them that, okay, make your internet multilingual. First, you know, they’ll say that what is the benefit for that? It’ll cost us a lot of money. And I think there is just one report, you know, that is out there which actually puts some figure that, okay, if you make the internet multilingual, there is $9 billion that you can get as part of, and you can, in fact, benefit, you know, or get a chunk of that resources. Those type of empirical studies, you know, we do not have. So I think, you know, we need, you know, many more of that. And as empirical evidence of the benefit of multilingualism in all sense of the word. The other thing is the technical capacities around the world is extremely poor. So I’ll just stop.

Moderator: Yeah, sorry, we’re running over time. And I’ve been informed that we need to wrap this up. I’d like to thank everyone for joining today, both here in Riyadh and remotely. And please join me in thanking our panelists for this very informative discussion. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you you you you

Agreement Points

Importance of IDNs for digital inclusion

speakers

Bhanu Neupane

Manal Ismail

Hesham M. AL-Hammad

Theresa Swinehart

arguments

IDNs crucial for fostering cultural diversity and digital inclusion

IDNs essential for continued internet expansion and reaching next billion users

IDNs help preserve local languages and culture online

IDNs allow users to engage online in their own languages and scripts

summary

Speakers agree that IDNs are crucial for digital inclusion, preserving cultural diversity, and expanding internet access to new users in their native languages.

Challenges in IDN adoption and implementation

speakers

Manal Ismail

Hesham M. AL-Hammad

Walter Wu

Sarmad Hussain

arguments

Low demand and slow uptake of IDNs in many regions

Complexity of variant management for scripts like Arabic

Lack of awareness about IDN availability and benefits

Technical issues with universal acceptance of IDNs across systems

summary

Speakers highlight various challenges in IDN adoption, including low demand, technical complexities, lack of awareness, and issues with universal acceptance.

Similar Viewpoints

These speakers emphasize the crucial role of governments and multi-stakeholder collaboration in promoting IDNs and universal acceptance through policy, leadership, and partnerships.

speakers

Manal Ismail

Hesham M. AL-Hammad

Bhanu Neupane

arguments

Governments should lead by example in promoting IDNs

Need for collaboration between regulators, industry and academia

Importance of including universal acceptance in national internet policies

Unexpected Consensus

Need for empirical evidence on IDN benefits

speakers

Bhanu Neupane

Walter Wu

arguments

Chinese registrar community pushing IDN usage and promotion

Importance of including universal acceptance in national internet policies

explanation

While not directly stated, both speakers indirectly point to the need for more concrete evidence of IDN benefits. Bhanu Neupane mentions the lack of empirical studies on the economic benefits of multilingual internet, while Walter Wu’s emphasis on Chinese registrars’ promotion efforts suggests a need for demonstrable benefits to drive adoption.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The speakers generally agree on the importance of IDNs for digital inclusion and cultural preservation, the challenges in IDN adoption and implementation, and the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration, especially government involvement, in promoting IDNs.

Consensus level

There is a high level of consensus on the fundamental importance and challenges of IDNs. This consensus implies a shared understanding of the issues, which could facilitate coordinated efforts to address challenges and promote IDN adoption. However, the diversity of specific challenges mentioned suggests that solutions may need to be tailored to different contexts and languages.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to promoting IDN adoption

speakers

Hesham M. AL-Hammad

Manal Ismail

arguments

IDNs help preserve local languages and culture online

Governments should lead by example in promoting IDNs

summary

While Hesham emphasizes technical solutions and collaboration with industry, Manal argues for a more proactive government-led approach to promoting IDNs.

Unexpected Differences

Perception of technical readiness for IDNs

speakers

Theresa Swinehart

Hesham M. AL-Hammad

arguments

ICANN programs to enable IDN awareness and universal acceptance

Complexity of variant management for scripts like Arabic

explanation

While Theresa’s argument suggests significant progress in IDN implementation, Hesham’s focus on the complexity of Arabic script variants reveals unexpected technical challenges that are still unresolved.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the approach to promoting IDN adoption, the readiness of technical infrastructure, and the role of different stakeholders in advancing IDNs.

difference_level

The level of disagreement is moderate. While all speakers agree on the importance of IDNs for digital inclusion, they have different perspectives on implementation strategies and priorities. These differences could impact the coordination of efforts to promote IDN adoption and universal acceptance globally.

Partial Agreements

All speakers agree on the importance of promoting IDN awareness and adoption, but they differ in their focus areas. Theresa emphasizes ICANN’s programs, Walter highlights industry efforts in China, while Sarmad points out the need to address technical challenges.

speakers

Theresa Swinehart

Walter Wu

Sarmad Hussain

arguments

ICANN programs to enable IDN awareness and universal acceptance

Chinese registrar community pushing IDN usage and promotion

Technical issues with universal acceptance of IDNs across systems

Similar Viewpoints

These speakers emphasize the crucial role of governments and multi-stakeholder collaboration in promoting IDNs and universal acceptance through policy, leadership, and partnerships.

speakers

Manal Ismail

Hesham M. AL-Hammad

Bhanu Neupane

arguments

Governments should lead by example in promoting IDNs

Need for collaboration between regulators, industry and academia

Importance of including universal acceptance in national internet policies

Key Takeaways

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are crucial for digital inclusion and fostering cultural diversity online

There are significant technical and awareness challenges hindering widespread IDN adoption

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is needed to promote IDNs and universal acceptance

Governments have an important role to play in leading IDN adoption and policy development

Progress has been made on IDNs but there is still a long way to go to achieve a truly multilingual internet

Resolutions and Action Items

UNESCO and ICANN to partner on preparing policy briefs for member states on universal acceptance

Continue efforts to raise awareness about IDNs through events like Universal Acceptance Day

Work on improving technical solutions for IDN implementation and universal acceptance

Encourage governments to include universal acceptance in national internet policies

Unresolved Issues

How to increase demand and uptake of IDNs in many regions

Addressing ongoing technical challenges with universal acceptance across systems

Managing the complexity of script variants, particularly for languages like Arabic

Lack of empirical studies on the economic benefits of multilingual internet

How to maintain progress on IDN support through software/system upgrades

Suggested Compromises

Using both IDN and ASCII domain names/email addresses to allow flexibility in communication

Implementing IDN support gradually through incentives rather than strict mandates

Focusing initial IDN promotion efforts on specific use cases like government services

We see that with the work which is being done by community, by ICANN, by others, there is now a growing awareness. We see more and more not just awareness, but adoption of domain names in local languages and e-mail addresses in local languages over time.

speaker

Sarmad Hussain

reason

This comment provides a balanced perspective on the progress of IDN adoption, acknowledging both achievements and ongoing challenges.

impact

It shifted the conversation from focusing solely on challenges to recognizing progress, while still maintaining a realistic view of the work ahead.

Sometimes we have the planes, but the airport is not ready. But still, this is a fact, and we need to work with it. So we need to work in parallel.

speaker

Hesham M. AL-Hammad

reason

This analogy effectively illustrates the complex interdependencies in implementing IDNs and the need for simultaneous progress on multiple fronts.

impact

It prompted a more nuanced discussion about the timing and coordination of various aspects of IDN implementation, rather than a simple linear approach.

We owe it to those who need it so we should continue pursuing this forward slowly but surely.

speaker

Manal Ismail

reason

This comment reframes the discussion in terms of ethical responsibility and long-term commitment, rather than just technical or business considerations.

impact

It added a moral dimension to the conversation and reinforced the importance of perseverance in the face of challenges.

Many governments or most governments still do not have the context of universal acceptance recognized as part of their internet policy. So this is a major drawback for us to move forward.

speaker

Bhanu Neupane

reason

This insight highlights a critical gap in policy-making that is hindering progress on IDN adoption.

impact

It shifted the focus of the discussion towards the role of government policy in promoting IDNs and universal acceptance, suggesting a new area for advocacy and action.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by broadening its scope from purely technical considerations to include policy, ethical, and strategic dimensions. They helped create a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities in IDN adoption, emphasizing the need for coordinated efforts across multiple stakeholders and a long-term commitment to progress. The discussion evolved from focusing on specific technical challenges to considering broader systemic issues and the importance of government involvement and policy changes.

What concrete steps need to be taken before the new round of gTLDs opens to improve IDN adoption?

speaker

Fouad Bajwa (audience member)

explanation

Important to address low IDN growth and ensure better success in the next round of gTLDs

How can we solve the problem of IDN support inconsistency across software updates?

speaker

Hesham M. AL-Hammad

explanation

Inconsistent support hinders user adoption and trust in IDNs

Can we develop solutions at the protocol level to address IDN challenges?

speaker

Hesham M. AL-Hammad

explanation

Fundamental protocol changes may be needed to fully support IDNs

How can we improve IDN support in CDNs, load balancers, and antiviruses?

speaker

Hesham M. AL-Hammad

explanation

These infrastructure components are critical for IDN functionality

How can we ensure secure identification of senders using IDN email addresses across different scripts?

speaker

Abdulmenem (audience member)

explanation

Important for trust and adoption of IDN email addresses in cross-cultural communication

How can we create more empirical studies on the economic benefits of multilingual internet?

speaker

Bhanu Neupane

explanation

Evidence needed to convince governments and stakeholders of IDN value

How can we improve technical capacities worldwide to support IDNs and universal acceptance?

speaker

Bhanu Neupane

explanation

Lack of technical capacity is hindering IDN adoption and implementation