My initial comment and Wolf's reply are below for reference. I believe that we need to keep our present problem, i.e. the wish of our Armenian ALS to participate to EURALO, separated from the broader issue of the redesign of the ICANN Regions. The attached document addresses the latter, in the framework of a wide consultation, at the end of which we all knew that the likelihood of some changes were minimal. The problem is that, in order to change the composition of the Regions, ICANN has to mediate among a large number of elements, and the main consequence of this change would be to potentially affect the composition of the Board. However, if we act pragmatically, we can solve our immediate problem, plus other potential problems that we might in other RALOs, like ALSes in territories that belong politically to one Region but are geographically in a different one. I am thinking at cases like French Polynesia, for instance. I was unable to find on our web site the rules and regulations for EURALO membership, but I assume that we say somewhere that ALSes must be located in the ICANN Region of Europe. I don't know what is the formulation of RIPE or CENTR, but I assume that they have it broader, because they both, while being regional organizations for ASO and ccNSO (actually, this is not 100% accurate, but never mind the details), accept members from other regions. What has to be clear is that we cannot modify rules that will have an impact on the representative bodies. In other words, the geographical distribution of the Councils and of the Board representatives has to be the same. For instance, EURALO will not be able to elect a representative from Armenia to ALAC. But I am pretty much convinced that we can change the restrictions on the Regional Organizations in order to be more inclusive, for instance introducing wording about commonality of interests, cultural links, geopolitical situation (and in this case the CoE status can be mentioned), or other. In the early days, we were paranoiac about capture, so the initial set of rules were pretty strict. Now that ALAC is approaching 200 members, we can rely on a solid structure, that can act as safeguard against possible abuse or misuse. Of course, we might have to be careful about the wording: we have to avoid that one country has ALSes in more RALOs. Maybe we need to define a sort of associate membership. Also, we can check what is the situation with .IR, that is in both APTLD (see http://www.aptld.org/member/ir-irnic) and CENTR (see http://www.centr.org/member/ipmirnic). Further ideas can be developed after reading this document: http://ccnso.icann.org/applications/geo-region-application.htm. Anyway, I am not saying that we have a solution that is quickly implementable without problems, but I maintain that we have an easier path if we take this pragmatic approach and postpone the general issue of ICANN Regions to later. I also believe that if we act in coordination with the Supporting Organizations that have their membership split in Regions we can have more arguments for changing the regional split. In simple words, if we go to the Board showing that the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) is in Europe for the ccNSO (CENTR), ASO (RIPE) and ALAC (EURALO), and nowhere in the Regionally-driven subsets of ICANN it appears in Asia, Australasia and Pacific Islands (AP), we might have a point next time that the ICANN Regions fall under review (the rule is every 5 years, even it has been disregarded in the past). We might want to involve the other RALOs in this discussion, as they might have similar issues and/or other ideas to solve the problems. Enough for today, R.
The main reason why ICANN has regions is for Board elections. And the ICANN Board will never use an arbitrary designation of regions, to avoid
problems.
So, it will stick as much as possible with the UN Statistics definition, with minor adjustments only in the case of some powerful voice yelling loud. If this happens, we find ourselves with things like some Pacific Islands being in Europe.
This said, other components of the ICANN community have some flexibility. In the chat we discussed the status of Armenia. Well, if you go to the site of the Armenian NIC (https://www.amnic.net/) you see that it is a member of RIPE (as Armenian addressing organization) and a member of CENTR (as Armenian TLD). Why cannot ALAC have the same flexibility in the allocation of an ALS to a RALO? This is a fight worth fighting, IMHO.
Of course, there are limitations. If you look carefully at the ccNSO and ASO, you discover that the composition of the Councils and the election of the ICANN Board members do indeed respect rigorously the geographical distribution. Moreover, the ccNSO site shows the national ccTLD members as belonging to the ICANN Region (see http://ccnso.icann.org/about/members.htm), even if then they have the flexibility to join a regional organization that is not the one to which they belong geographically.
I have always insisted on the fact that we have great potential for outreach and collaboration with ccTLDs: the regional organization is one example where this communication can be extremely useful.
(WL) The rubbery and unrewarding discussion on ICANN's regional model is always reaffirming where the model comes from and why it's stupid and inflexible as it is ... and when nothing changes, it's getting boring. In fact, we drafted a EURALO statement on the regions (what was in vain again -- see attachment) where we highlighted other European perceptions (like CoE and other models) and special cases like Armenia etc. IMO, it would bring NO harm to the ICANN model to provide a certain flexibility for special cases to choose and decide about their regional affiliation ...