According to DomainIncite report, ICANN’s board of directors will next week vote on whether to redelegate .ml, the country-code top-level domain for the war-torn nation of Mali, to a new registry operator. ICANN must decide which registry operator should control the .ml domain as the conflict in northern Mali gets worse. The ccTLDs is currently delegated to Societe des Telecommunications du Mali (Sotelma), a publicly traded telecommunications provider, but it is not presently possible to register an .ml domain. The causes for a redelegation has not been revealed by ICANN until after they are approved, when IANA publishes a redelegation report hence it is not yet clear what is going on this case, as per DomainIncite report.
In September, ICANN met to discuss the redelegation on the domain representing Mali to the Agence des Technologies de L’Information et de la communications.“The main issue is whether all the local stakeholders have agreed that this agency is the most competent one to manage this domain,” Lance Hinds, CEO of South American ICT Company BrainStreet said in an email posted in the At Large community. “Governments, especially our neck of the woods tend to see this is an income stream and in many cases have tried to control it.”
“The current violent extremism happening in Mali will no doubt impact on the ALS in Mali which is in this instance ISOC Mali. There is a lot of displacement and food crises and our thoughts continue to be with you,” Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro, director of Pasifika Nexus, an IT consultancy in Fiji, said in an email. “It is also great to see countries like the US provide funds to assist Mali in this hard time. We hope the ALS ISOC Mali and its members are well.”