MIC - Partnership between ICANN and the Arab World
16 May 2007ag-IP-news Agency reported yesterday that the Arab Knowledge Management Society (AKMS) announced on May 13, the creation of a Multilingual Internet Committee (MIC) in an effort to raise awareness and start a constructive dialogue within the Arabic Internet community regarding technical aspects as well as policies related to domain names and numbers. Their web site is located at http://www.akms.org
It is important to understand, that the MIC doesn’t represent a partnership between ICANN and AKMS only, but rather represents a real partnership between ICANN and the Arab world.
MIC is headed by Samar Al-Labbad, Deputy Chair of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAGorg), together with Baher Esmat, Middle East Liaison of ICANN.
The Committee seeks to realize its objectives in coordination with ICANN on matters of interest in the Arab region, cooperate with Internet-related Arab regional initiatives, promote the development of a better Arabic content on the Internet, and Arabize and localize Internet applications.
The Committee will organize programs for education and raising awareness concerning the Internet in various Arab countries. Organization of three events for the upcoming six months was approved in Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf region.
The first event was organized recently at the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh College of Business German-Jordanian University under the patronage of the Minister of Information and Communications Technology Basem Rousan. The event included a lecture entitled “Internet, Innovation and Policies: A Phenomenon of Cooperation & Collaboration” presented by Esmat.
Al-Labbad stressed that AKMS assumed a long term commitment towards promoting Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for development.
Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, TAGorg Chairman, has been working for several years in this field and was the Vice-Chair of the United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force (UN ICT TF). This Task Force is considered to be a global body that aims at promoting the role of ICTs and utilizing them as tools for development. Since the first effects of the Internet during 1990’s, the development of a multilingual Internet in terms of application and content has emerged as a top priority.
In addition, Al-Labbad highly praised the constructive cooperation relations with ICANN, indicating that this Committee will “not be the groundwork in our joint work only, but it will rather help us to make use of the experiences and progress achieved by both our organizations and pave the way toward further accomplishments for the Internet to become available for all people.”
Through the Committee, AKMS seeks to support and exerted efforts to better communicate the views of the Internet community sectors in the Arab region and seriously consider such views by ICANN.
“This initiative is a joint effort between AKMS and ICANN and is a significant step in implementing ICANN outreach plan in the Middle East. We look forward to working more closely and further cooperating with AKMS in order to realize the established objectives of this initiative,” Esmat said.
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