Dear colleagues,

Please find here and below my Liaison Report ahead of today’s call. Please note that I may join late due to competing commitments – my apologies in advance. I look forward to your feedback on the items flagged below, particularly the proposed bilateral agenda for ICANN86.

Warm regards,

Joanna

GAC Liaison Report: ALAC Monthly Call

By: Joanna Kulesza, EURALO, ALAC Liaison to the GAC

Reporting Period: February – April 2026

Submitted: April 2026

1. Regulatory Developments Briefing Series

1.1 Review of the Briefing Series – GAC Governmental Engagement Call

Following a productive cycle of seven briefings delivered since January 2025, a dedicated call with the ICANN Governmental Engagement team is scheduled to review the format of the series and decide on its continuation, cadence and ownership going forward. This report reflects the Liaison’s preliminary position; input from ALAC members ahead of that call is welcomed.

Options under consideration:

Option A – Maintain current cadence (monthly/intersessional, up to nine sessions per year). Next proposed topic: inaugural Organizational Session of the UN Global Mechanism on ICT Security, the successor framework to the Open-Ended Working Group established pursuant to UNGA resolution 79/237, which took place on 30–31 March 2026 at UN Headquarters.
Option B – Reduce to quarterly (four sessions per year). Allows for deeper preparation, higher-profile speakers, and sustainable administrative load.
Option C – Sunset the series in its current form; replace with ad-hoc briefings tied to specific multilateral events (WSIS+20 milestones, Global Mechanism cycle outcomes, Hanoi Convention ratifications).

Liaison’s preliminary view: the series has established itself as a cross-community platform for substantive engagement on regulatory developments of direct relevance to ICANN and to end-user interests. It fills a gap no other ICANN convening currently covers. Option B (quarterly) is recommended as the most sustainable arrangement, conditional on continued administrative support from the ICANN Governmental Engagement team. Feedback from ALAC members is welcomed before the GAC–GE call.

2. ICANN86 Seville – ALAC–GAC Bilateral Meeting Preparation

Preparation for the ALAC–GAC bilateral at ICANN86 (Seville, 7–11 June 2026) is underway, in coordination with the GAC Chair, ALAC Chair, and the ICANN Governmental Engagement team.

Provisional agenda items under discussion:

DNS abuse enforcement: follow-up to ICANN85 discussions and the GNSO Council review
WSIS+20 follow-up and the Global Mechanism’s first-cycle agenda
ASP mid-program assessment (pending publication of ICANN org analysis)

Feedback from ALAC is explicitly sought on:

Whether DNS abuse and WSIS+20 should be retained as standing agenda items in the bilateral format, given that both topics were covered at length in ICANN84 and ICANN85 bilaterals.
Whether the UN Permanent Mechanism on Cybersecurity should be introduced as a new item, reflecting its recent launch and its impact on DNS security and stability.
Speaker balance and intervention points; candidate ALAC speakers for each item.

3. Strategic Alignment with ALAC FY26 Priorities

The work reported here directly supports two of ALAC’s FY26 Strategic Objectives.

Strategic Objective 1: Evolve and promote ICANN’s multistakeholder model. The Liaison’s engagement with the UN Global Mechanism’s Organizational Session, and the Regulatory Developments Briefing on that process, directly contribute to the At-Large community’s informed participation in the post-WSIS+20 international governance environment.

Strategic Objective 3: Collaborate with relevant stakeholders to evolve the Internet’s unique identifier systems. Ongoing ALAC–GAC coordination on DNS abuse, Hanoi Convention implementation and registration data access continues to reflect shared responsibility for identifier governance with a user-centric perspective.

4. Recommendations

ALAC to endorse continuation of the Regulatory Developments Briefing Series on a quarterly cadence, with the ICANN Governmental Engagement team leading administrative coordination and the ALAC Liaison leading content direction.
ALAC to provide feedback on the proposed ICANN86 bilateral agenda by 4 May 2026, with particular attention to the question of whether the UN Permanent Mechanism on Cybersecurity should be introduced as a standing item.
ALAC to flag any further topics for Regulatory Developments Briefings in Q2 2026, to allow for speaker recruitment and agenda coordination with the GAC GE team.

Annex: Regulatory Developments Briefing Series – Delivery Record

Seven briefings delivered since January 2025:

Briefing 1 – WSIS+20 Discussion (13 January 2025)
Briefing 2 – UN Cybercrime Convention and the Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention (13 February 2025)
Briefing 3 – Regulatory Approaches to Cybersecurity and Internet Governance (with Jan Králík, Council of Europe) (24 April 2025)
Briefing 4 – Internet Infrastructure and Multistakeholder Governance in MENA (29 May 2025)
Briefing 5 – UN OEWG Outcomes & WSIS+20 Reflections (24 July 2025)
Briefing 6 – WSIS+20 Zero Draft: Internet Governance section (11 September 2025)
Briefing 7 – WSIS+20 UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting Outcomes (15 January 2026)

See the Confluence page for further details and recordings.