Dear All, Recommendations for managing Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) variant labels for top level domains (TLDs) have been developed by ICANN organization. The relevant materials along with the recommendations are being published to seek community feedback for finalizing them. Close Date: 3 Sep 2018 23:59 UTC Current Status: The community has identified a need for IDN variant TLDs; however, the ICANN Board resolved on 25 September 2010 that "no variants of gTLDs will be delegated ... until appropriate variant management solutions are developed." Subsequent work by ICANN organization and the community led to the identification of two issues: (i) there is no accepted definition for variant TLDs, and (ii) there is no 'variant management' mechanism for TLDs. For the first issue, the Root Zone Label Generation Rules (RZ-LGR) Procedure was developed with the support of the community and adopted by the ICANN Board on 11 April 2013 for implementation. The Procedure has been implemented and RZ-LGR has been developed for six scripts, and other scripts are being added as their proposals are finalized by the relevant script communities. For the second issue, ICANN organization has undertaken a detailed examination to develop a set of recommendations on variant management mechanisms for TLDs, which will be finalized based on the community input. Next Steps: The finalized recommendations will be presented to the ICANN Board, anticipated in March 2019. At that time, the ICANN Board will be requested to consider these recommendations to allow for implementing IDN variant TLDs. Read more: https://www.icann.org/public-comments/managing-idn-variant-tlds-2018-07-25-e... Best regards, Joke Braeken ccNSO Policy Advisor joke.braeken@icann.org<mailto:joke.braeken@icann.org> Follow @ccNSO on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ccNSO Follow the ccNSO on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ccnso/ http://ccnso.icann.org