Dear Mary and Co-chairs,

Many thanks for providing the below summary of the process moving forward. Further to the below email, it is unclear to me where exactly the Consensus call is taking place. It appears that there is an anonymous poll to be conducted, followed by a determination of consensus level by the chairs, followed by a discussion on the chairs’ designation, but I am unable to identify at what stage therein if any, the Consensus call itself is deemed to be taking place.

In the below email, it states that the, “final consensus level for each option included in the Final Report will be determined under the procedure provided in the Guidelines”. So does that mean there will at some point be a Consensus call made “on the designated mailing list”, as per the Guidelines?

Zak

It is the view of the co-chairs that our exhaustive discussion of the options for dealing with the potential situation of an IGO successfully asserting an immunity claim in a judicial context have reached an end point; that all issues relevant to our Charter have been raised, understood and discussed; and that further discussion is unlikely to yield additional options that enjoy consensus support, or sway the view of Working Group participants regarding which option should prevail.

Therefore, the co-chairs intend to proceed in the following manner:

• If a significant number of WG members believe that further oral discussion of the three additional options that will be presented in a final consensus call is needed, supplementing the three that were presented for WG consideration in our preliminary consensus call held in October 2017, and that email list discussion is insufficient for WG members to understand the intent and effect of all six options to be included in the consensus call, we will hold a WG meeting on December 21^st at our regular time. Please respond to the mailing list if you believe a call on December 21^st is needed.

• On December 22^nd, a second poll will be sent to all WG members. The purpose of this poll is to assist the co-chairs in determining the level of support/opposition that each option enjoys. This poll will ask all WG members to designate one of the six options as their preferred choice for addressing the IGO immunity issue. WG members will also be provided with means to add comments regarding that preferred choice, as well as each of the other five options. These comments can indicate support or opposition for each of the options, as well as whatever additional views a WG members wishes to provide. Responses to this poll will be anonymous, although any WG member will be free to share his/her response on the WG email list. The poll will remain open until Friday January 5th, 2018. The aggregated results of the poll, as well as all comments, will be shared with all WG members and will be included as a section of our Final Report.

• Once the poll closes, the co-chairs will review all responses and then share their views with WG members regarding the level of consensus that each option enjoys. We hope to hold the first meeting of the WG on January 11^th, 2018 in order to discuss poll results and the co-chairs’ evaluation. The GNSO WG Guidelines provide all WG members with an opportunity to provide feedback on those proposed classifications, and the final consensus level for each option included in the Final Report will be determined under the procedure provided in the Guidelines. As soon as that process is completed we will publish a draft Final Report for WG review and comment, and will provide a reasonable time for all WG members to draft and submit Minority views. We will try to have our Final Report ready for submission to the GNSO Council in order to meet the February 12^th, 2018 document submission deadline, at the latest, for its February 22^nd meeting.

Please let us know if you have any questions about this procedure. Thank you.