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Harassment down, bitchiness up at ICANN

Kevin Murphy, July 2, 2026, Domain Policy

ICANN’s Ombuds dealt with 50% more cases in its last-reported year, with most of the growth attributable to community members who just can’t seem to get along.

In a recently published annual report (pdf), covering the period to the end of June 2025 (yes, it really is published a whole year after the fact), the Ombuds said that it opened 248 tickets in the year.

But 212 of those — basically the same as the previous year — were ruled “out of scope”, perhaps because they were requests for information or help rather that outright complaints.

The remaining 36, up from 24 in the prior year, were ruled “in-scope”. Eight of those cases were complaints.

The Ombuds splits cases into two buckets — “unfairness” and “interpersonal and relational”. Unfairness cases were flat at 16, but down as a percentage from 67% to 44% due to the interpersonal category growing from seven cases to 20.

The interpersonal bucket refers to how community members interact in their working groups and such. It covers harassment, conflict, uncivil language and behavior.

Combined, cases concerning these behaviors accounted for 56% of the total, but the Ombuds reported that only two of those were at the level of claims of harassment.

ICANN hires new Ombuds from WIPO

Kevin Murphy, September 19, 2024, Domain Policy

ICANN has named its new Ombuds, who will take over the role vacated by Herb Waye almost a year ago.

She’s Liz Field, a HR specialist who spent most of her career at Amnesty International but most recently has been working for WIPO as an independent outside consultant, according to her LinkedIn.

After almost two decades at Amnesty, Field worked for two years as an anti-harassment coordinator for the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Field, who says she also speaks French and Spanish, will take over from complaints officer Krista Papac, who has been filling in for Waye since his resignation.

ICANN said that 36 people applied for the job — 22 men and 14 women. The Ombuds Search Committee interviewed five of them and two candidates were interviewed by the full board of directors.

The genders of the applicants is relevant in this case. Some female ICANN community members have previously said they would be reluctant to make gender-related complaints, such as sexual harassment, to a male Ombuds.

ICANN chair Tripti Sinha earlier this week linked the hiring of the new Ombuds to a strengthened anti-harassment policy that the board hopes to shortly introduce. Field seems to have the CV to support such a goal.

The Ombuds role is to hear complaints about unfair treatment and unpleasant behavior in and from the Org and community.

The job occupies a unique position in ICANN’s structure, answering directly to the board rather than the Org’s management hierarchy. Only four people have occupied the role since it was created 20 year ago.

ICANN drops the “man” from Ombudsman

Kevin Murphy, December 1, 2023, Domain Policy

ICANN is looking for a new “Ombuds”, having quietly dropped the “man” from Ombudsman following the resignation of Herb Waye.

The Org said it has hired a recruitment consultant and put out a call for expressions of interest in the role last night.

The Ombuds’ job is to handle complaints independently of ICANN Org and board and be an “objective advocate for fairness”. It’s one of ICANN’s bylaws-mandated accountability mechanisms.

The Org seems to have officially made the switch from “Ombudsman” to “Ombuds” at the start of October when Krista Papac took on the job on an interim basis. The old URL icann.org/ombudsman now forwards to icann.org/ombuds.

Like many middle-aged men, I often roll my eyes at this kind of terminology change, despite my impeccable woke credentials.

I have always assumed that “Ombudsman” was etymologically a gender-neutral term, given its Scandinavian roots, but I’ve read around the topic today and it seems that that assumption is open to debate.

I’ve concluded that it doesn’t matter either way — nobody’s getting hurt by the change, so fuck it, “Ombuds” it is.