On October 19, ICANN 69 had a webinar on universal acceptance titled “Outreach for Addressing Universal Acceptance,” with over 60 participants. They discussed the work of local initiatives and UA ambassadors as well as results and further plans.
Chief Analyst of the Coordination Center TLD .RU/.РФ Maria Kolesnikova was among the speakers. She talked about the local initiative on Universal Acceptance of CIS and Eastern Europe that involved representatives of IDN TLD registries and IT companies from seven countries: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Armenia, Georgia, and Serbia.
Together with the Coordination Center, they implement initiatives to promote the concept of UA in each country; engage officials and representatives of technical communities in a dialogue by holding training sessions, hackathons, and carrying out research projects; publish educational articles; and adapt UASG technical documents on UA for local communities to name a few things.
“The work of local initiatives and UA ambassadors is an important part of UASG’s activities. It is good to see that new initiative groups and experts appear. For example, local initiatives from Thailand and China have joined this year. We all work at the local level directly cooperating with interested parties in our countries, sharing experience and helping to deliver international recommendations and best practices in the sphere of Universal Acceptance that UASG develops,” Maria Kolesnikova said.
She also noted that the Russian UA working group was established in 2020. It includes representatives of Russian IDN registries, registrars and information security experts. Moreover, she talked about Поддерживаю.РФ, a project to develop the infrastructure for IDNs and EAI, as well as about the Coordination Center’s participation in international research on UA, such as IDN World Report, UNESCO and EURid’s joint research on IDNs.
In conclusion, Maria Kolesnikova invited everyone to IGF 2020, Global Internet Governance Forum, where UA will be discussed among other topics. IGF 2020 will take place on November 2-6, 2020 online.
