HI All,

That may be the requirements of ICANN, but IGF's are different.

UN events once given out to a country are hard to take back as only security issues noted by the UN security team can cause it to switch the bids

IGF- Host country pays for the venue, pays for lunch for all attendees, pays for the entire costs of the high level, parliamentary panels. (flights, hotels, per diem, and cars for high level or ministerial attendees

Pays for the UN Staff and security

Saudi put in a bid, as did other countries. One reason why Saudi Arabia may have been chosen was that 10 years ago Saudi Arabia voted not to WSIS and for extending the IGF Mandate, and now they are a big supporter.  IGF Needs their votes.

Human rights do not get included into the calculation

With ICANN as they are paying for all these issues they can and do decide where to go.  If you recall, they told Malaysia they were not coming back and broke their contract because of Malaysia passing this Draconian law.

I am not in favor of Oman, but I see therm as no different from Abu Dhabi or Dubai.

Cheers,

Judith

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On 1/14/25 4:14 PM, Bill Jouris via NA-Discuss wrote:
Hi Glenn, 

For some years now, the countries on the Arabian Peninsula have been working to launder improve their image.  They have sponsored sports teams (for example, the Emirates sponsor a world cup racing boat; even though none of the crew are from there).  They host sporting events (the Darfur race no longer goes across the Sahara, but is now run entirely within Saudi Arabia).  Hosting conferences seems like just another opportunity for them to normalize themselves. 

Suppose Oman, or any other country, says to ICANN something like (and I'm just pulling numbers out of the air here): Hold your conference here.  We'll give your attendees hotel rooms at half what they would pay elsewhere.  We'll give your staff rooms for a quarter the rate elsewhere.  And we'll let you rent the conference center for 10% of what you would pay elsewhere. That's going to make them look irresistibly attractive. 

Even if you are monitoring the human rights records of possible venues, at some point organizations are going to see a tradeoff.  They probably won't go somewhere actively dangerous to their attendees (e.g. Khargiv).  But human rights abuses would have to get pretty dire before they would out-weight any and every other factor. 

I'm not saying that the IGF or ICANN necessarily made that calculation.  But I would be surprised if the cost factor didn't factor in. 

Bill Jouris 

On Tuesday, January 14, 2025 at 11:14:49 AM PST, Glenn McKnight via NA-Discuss <na-discuss@icann.org> wrote:


Hi 
. It's interesting that ICANN was actively involved in participating at the recent  IGF 2024 in Saudi Arabia and I noticed that  ICANN's  Annual 2025 meeting will be held in Oman. 
Is this a current policy trend by ICANN.?
Anyone monitoring the human rights issues in these countries 

See reports


Anyone interested in this issue?

Glenn McKnight, MA 
Virtual School of Internet Governance 
Chief Information Officer
YOUR SOURCE FOR INTERNET GOVERNANCE EDUCATION 
Mobile  437-237-4655

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