At the beginning of this week, the International Court of Justice decided by a 13-1 majority that the United Kingdom should stop its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as soon as possible. To understand what this has to do with the domain industry, we need to look into the history and geography. The Chagos Archipelago is located about half way between Africa and Indonesia and is geographically related to the islands of Mauritius. But shortly before Mauritius gained independence in 1968, the UK declared Chagos British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), so its US allies could build a military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island in the archipelago. For several years, the entire indigenous population of the islands was forcibly relocated to Mauritius or the Seychelles, and today mostly British and American military personnel reside on the archipelago.
Over the years, the BIOT abbreviation was officially recognized by the International Standards Organization, and ICANN assigned .IO to the territory. Today, the ccTLD enjoys considerable popularity among software developers and tech start-ups, with over 270,000 names registered to it, according to Domain Incite.
However, Mauritius never stopped its struggle to regain sovereignty over the archipelago. The finale of this campaign was the International Court of Justice decision. But it is difficult to predict what will happen next. First, it is not clear whether the UK is willing to make this decision, as the British authorities have not yet commented on it. But even if it happens, the fate of .IO still remains vague. On one hand, a ccTLD may not be able to exist if the country it is assigned to ceases to exist (in this case, an administrative territory). On the other hand, there are no formal rules on this. ICANN’s Country Code Names Support Organization has not completed a policy on retiring ccTLDs. There are several historical precedents. For example, .AN was delegated to Netherlands Antilles (at the time – an autonomy within the Netherlands). But in 2010, autonomy was given up, and five years later the domain was removed from the DNS root zone. At the same time, there are reverse examples. The Soviet Union has not existed for a long time, but .SU continues to exist and enjoys considerable popularity.
