ICANN would reject call for “diversity” office
ICANN’s board of directors would reject a call for an “Office of Diversity”, due to its current budget crunch.
The board said as much in remarks filed to a public comment period that got its final report this week.
The report of the CCWG-Accountability Work Stream 2 working group had recommended several potential things ICANN could do to improve diversity in the community, largely focused on collecting and publishing data on diversity.
“Diversity” for the purposes of the recommendations does not have the usual racial connotations of the word. Instead it means: geography, language, gender, age, physical disability, skills and stakeholder group.
Some members of the working group had proposed an independent diversity office, to ensure ICANN sticks to diversity commitments, but this did not gain consensus support and was not a formal recommendation.
Some commenters, including (in a personal capacity) a current vice chair of the Governmental Advisory Committee and a former ICANN director, had echoed the call for an office of diversity.
But ICANN’s board said it would not be able to support such a recommendation:
Given the lack of clarity around this office, lack of consensus support within the subgroup (and presumably within the CCWG-Accountability and the broader community), and noting the previously-mentioned budget and funding constraints and considerations, the Board is not in a position to accept this item if it were to be presented as a formal consensus-based recommendation
In general terms, it encouraged the working group to consider ICANN’s “limited funding” when it makes its final recommendations.
It added that it may be difficult for ICANN to collect personal data on community members, in light of the General Data Protection Regulation, the EU privacy law that kicks in this May.
All the comments on the report can be found here.
ICANN receives first sexual harassment complaint
ICANN’s Ombudsman has received what is thought to be the first complaint of sexual harassment at an ICANN meeting.
The allegation emerged during a meeting between non-commercial stakeholders and the ICANN board of directors yesterday.
During its sessions with constituency groups yesterday, the ICANN board had pushed participants for their views on geographic and gender diversity in the ICANN community.
“Two days ago I was sexually harassed at this meeting,” the complainant, who I’m not going to name here, told the board.
She said she discovered the best way to address her grievance was by reporting it to the ICANN Ombudsman.
“I was amazed that the Ombudsman told me that I was the first registered complaint of sexual harassment in the history of ICANN,” she said.
No details of the incident or alleged perpetrator were given.
The complainant said that ICANN should have a policy in place to deal with such behavior.
The organization has written expected standards of behavior, but they don’t specifically cover harassment.
While I’m aware of multiple incidents of women feeling sexually harassed at ICANN meetings — even witnessed a couple first-hand — this is the first time I’ve heard about a formal complaint being made.
A few years ago, the Ombudsman stepped in quickly to resolve an issue of sexist paraphernalia at a exhibitor’s booth, but that complaint was made by a man and did not amount to “harassment” as such.
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