1. The Middle East Strategy (MES) December 13, 2013 Fahd A. Batayneh Stakeholder Engagement Coordinator, Middle East ICANN

2. 2  Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers  Headquartered in Los Angeles with hub offices in Istanbul and Singapore  Engagement centers in Beijing, Brussels, Geneva, Montevideo, and Washington DC  Three annual meetings with no restrictions on attendance  Online presence at http://www.icann.org/http://www.icann.org/ What is ICANN?

3. 3  Coordinates the names and numbers identifiers of the Internet; i.e. Domain Names and IP addresses  Provides Technical Operations via the IANA functions  Administrating some responsibilities of the DNS root servers  Allocation of Internet Numbering  Policy development for Internet Names and Numbers in a Bottom-Up, Consensus Driven, Multi-Stakeholder model What Does ICANN Do?

4. 4  New Generic Top Level Domains (New gTLDs)  100s of names to be introduced into the root  Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)  Top Level Domains in native languages  Capacity Building Initiatives  Regional Strategies  Promoting DNSSec and IPv6 deployment  Deployment of secondary root-server instances Current Projects/Activities at ICANN

5. 5  Middle East Strategy Working Group (MESWG)  Formed in late 2012 under ICANN’s Coordination  Covers the 22 Arab states, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan  An ad-hoc working group consisting of 21 experts from 11 countries of the region  A 3-year strategy  Arab DNS Forum What is ICANN doing for the ME Region?

6. 6  Foster two-way engagement between ICANN and the broader Internet community in the region;  Build strong and competitive domain name industry in the region;  Promote multi-stakeholder Internet governance mechanisms in the region Strategic Goals for ICANN’s Engagement

7. 7  Working group has defined three strategic areas to work on: 1.DNS Security and Stability 2.Domain Name Industry 3.Internet Governance Ecosystem  More at https://community.icann.org/display/MES/Middle+East+Wor king+Group https://community.icann.org/display/MES/Middle+East+Wor king+Group Strategic Areas of Work

8. 8  Task Force on Arabic Internationalized Domain Names (TF- AIDN)  Formed in October and announced during the AIGF-II  20 experts varying in their expertise (DNS, Linguistics, Unicode…)  The proceedings of the task force can be followed at https://community.icann.org/display/MES/TF-AIDN+Work+Space https://community.icann.org/display/MES/TF-AIDN+Work+Space  Still open for newcomers to join on-board What is the MESWG Up To?

9. 9  Task Force on Capacity Building Activities (TF-CBA)  Call open until December 21  Wiki page at https://community.icann.org/display/MES/TF- CBA+Wiki+Spacehttps://community.icann.org/display/MES/TF- CBA+Wiki+Space  The window for joining will always remain open to new experts  “Train-the-Trainer” model  Work in progress … cont. (What is the MESWG Up To?)

10. 10 ICANN Learn http://learn.icann.org/

11. Questions? Thank you fahd.batayneh@icann.org http://www.icann.org/