IDN ccTLD عراق from the Republic of Iraq Passes String Evaluation

ICANN announced the successful completion of String Evaluation on proposed IDN ccTLD string (xn--mgbtx2b عراق) for the Republic of Iraq. Iraq’s latin ccTLD is .IQ.

The IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) ccTLD Fast Track Process was approved by the ICANN Board at its annual meeting in Seoul, South Korea on 30 October 2009. First requests were received starting 16 November 2009. The process enables countries and territories to submit requests to ICANN for IDN ccTLDs, representing their respective country or territory names in scripts other than Latin. IDN ccTLD requesters must fulfill a number of requirements:

• the script used to represent the IDN ccTLDs must be non-Latin;
• the languages used to express the IDN ccTLDs must be official in the corresponding country or territory; and
• a specific set of technical requirements must be met (as evaluated by an external DNS Stability Panel comprised of DNS and IDN experts).

The request and evaluation processes entail three steps:

• Preparation (by the requester in the country / territory): Community consensus is built for which IDN ccTLD to apply for, how it is run, and which organization will be running it, along with preparing and gathering all the required supporting documentation. Requests are submitted through an online system together with additional material supporting the process at http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/.
• String Evaluation: Requests are evaluated in accordance with the technical and linguistic requirements for the IDN ccTLD string(s) criteria described above.
• String Delegation: Requests successfully meeting string evaluation criteria are eligible to apply for delegation following the same ICANN IANA process as is used for ASCII based ccTLDs. Requesters submit string delegation requests to IANA root zone management: root-mgmt@iana.org.

With this announcement, a total of 33 countries/territories requests have successfully passed through the String Evaluation. Of these, 26 countries/territories (represented by 36 IDN ccTLDs) are delegated in the DNS root zone; with the remainder either readying to apply, or actively applying for, delegation of the string. Up-to-date numbers about the IDN Fast Track Program will continue to be provided on the Fast Track Process web page at http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track.