“Each Language Should be Handled by its People” Abu-Ghazaleh Advocates
05 Jun 2004Mr. Khalid Fattal, Chairman & CEO of Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC), submitted June 3, 2004, a statement in which he tackled the pressing issue of “ICANN & IANA’s posting of an Arabic Language Table by a Polish ccTLD registry NASK”.
The statement was addressed to Dr. Vint Cerf, Chairman of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Mr. Paul Towmey, President and CEO of ICANN, Mr. Paul Verhoof, ICANN Vice President, and Mr. Doug Barton, General Manager of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
“NASK is a non-Arabic organization and is neither an Arab ccTLD, nor does it represent Arab interests,” “More worrying is ICANN & IANA’s current policies that recognized such illegitimate submission on the IANA website” Mr. Fattal argued.
Advocating Mr. Fattal’s discussion, and highlighting the idea that it is the Arab’s right to define their language in a language table of their own, Mr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh in his capacity as the President of the Arab Knowledge & Management Society (AKMS), and chairman & founder of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAGO), fully supported Mr. Fattal’s assertion that language is the property of a respective language community; this is why only recognized experts from certain language communities have the legitimate right to develop any tables and standards related to their respective language.
In order to prevent a situation like this, Mr. Fattal called on ICANN and IANA to adopt immediate corrective measures including the following:
-Remove the Polish ccTLD registry NASK’s Arabic language table from the IANA website.
- Reserve the development of Arabic language standards and tables to be done by Arabs
derived from their respective Arabic language community, but above all
- Amend ICANN & IANA’s current policies so as to never allow such an offensive act to
occur again.
Most importantly, Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh fully supports Mr. Fattal’s call to ICANN and IANA to adopt, without delay, major reforms with respect to the global policy architecture to complement the current technical Internet architecture, to emphasize that a local language is the property of the people of that language, and to deploy policies that encourage, support and enhance local empowerment.
It is worth noting that TAGO hosted under the patronage of HM King Abdullah II of Jordan, the founders meeting of the Arabic Internet Names Consortium (AINC) held March 31, 2001 in Amman, and Mr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh was elected as its founding Chairman.