Dear Councillors,

as some of you might remember, there was an agenda item on WS2 implementation update at our last meeting in 2020. For the Council meeting in January, we have a pretty packed agenda. Therefore, the leadership decided to update you on the WS2 small team's work (in the context of the broader community work on this) via email. 

We will get back to this topic in the next meetings. For now, I would like to share the updates (below). Please let me know if you have any questions -- happy to answer.

The small team of GNSO Councillors had a task to go through the WS2 recommendations and (1) see which recommendations concern the GNSO Council's remit and (2) prioritise them. You can see the result of this work -- a big Table with prioritisation -- attached to this email as a PDF document. 

The group considers the following recommendations important for the GNSO Council in the next steps to implement WS2 recommendations: 

Topic 2. Guidelines for Standards of Conduct Presumed to be in Good Faith Associated with Exercising Removal of Individual ICANN Board Directors

Relevance to the GNSO Council: partially relevant. 

Priority: high.

Suggested action: we decided to follow up with drafters of previous GNSO guidelines to see what has been addressed already and whether the existing GNSO Guidelines on Bylaw obligations as a Decisional Participant provide sufficient flexibility to satisfy WS2 rec 2.1.2. 

Heather Forrest, who chaired the group, which drafted the existing guidelines, believes that there is no need to update the Guidelines in the intermediate terms because they are not in conflict with the WS2 requirements and there is nothing preventing the applicant of the Guidelines from satisfying the WS2 requirements when following the process as outlined in the Guidelines. However, in the long term, it might be beneficial to make an explicit reference to the additional requirements of WS2; these WS2 recommendations can be included in the list of items for consideration if/when the Council decides to launch the review of these Guidelines.

Topic 3. Framework of Interpretation for Human Rights 

Relevance to the GNSO Council: fully relevant. 

Priority: medium to high 

Suggested action: the prioritization level of implementing this recommendation is to be discussed by the GNSO Council. 

Topic 4. Jurisdiction. Subtopic: absence of a choice of law provision in the base RA

Relevance to the GNSO Council: partially relevant

Priority: medium 

Suggested action: Recommendation considers Contracted Parties.  Coordination among the GNSO Council/SGs/Cs may be needed for implementing this recommendation. SGs/Cs should be made aware of this recommendation and report back to the Council on their assessment.

Topic 6. Increase SO/AC Accountability

Relevance to the GNSO Council: partially relevant

Priority: medium 

Suggested action: The GNSO Council has already been in compliance with some of the recommendations. The implementation of them is ongoing. Substantive consideration of these issues could form part of the GNSO3 review. 

Currently, the ICANN community and ICANN Org are preparing an overview of the views on the implementation of WS2 recommendations. The Council's views on this will be considered together with prioritisation considerations by other parts of the community and, of course, the ICANN Org. the situation is currently developing, and we can hopefully go back to this work soon and get some updates when the data is aggregated. 

Warm regards,

Tanya