From 7 to 12 March, the multistakeholder community will meet in Mumbai, India, for the ICANN 85 Community Forum to discuss current issues and developments related to the security and advancement of the Internet. Among other things, the focus will be on the (continued) work on universal acceptance, the development and implementation of a human rights impact assessment (HRIA) within ICANN structures, and the use of the domain name system. Many bodies will also discuss further preparations for the new generic top-level domain (gTLD) program. An overview of the main topics of the event can be found here.
The project ‘Child Protection and Children's Rights in the Digital World’ continues to address the importance of children's rights and their realisation of protection, provision and participation in the digital environment. Against this background, work on the development and implementation of a human rights impact assessment remains of interest. The development of a policy development process to mitigate DNS abuse will also be a focus of the upcoming event, which will feature four content-related sessions. In addition, from a children's rights perspective, the upcoming decision-making process on how to deal with urgent requests in the context of the Registration Data Request Service (RDRS) is also important. Its further development and efficiency must also be continuously supported and promoted. The Digital Opportunities Foundation has contributed to both issues in recent months as part of the public consultation process. These statements can be downloaded below.