ICANN-BIGF meeting hints Positive response
Singapore's Grand Hyatt Hotel is hosting the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum's regional conference APRIGF. The delegation of Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum (BIGF) held a side line meeting of the conference on Monday (September 12, 2022).
BIGF Chairperson and Chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Hasanul Haque Inu led the delegation, the organization's Secretary General Mohammad Abdul Haque Anu and ICANN Vice President Mr. Jia Rong Low, Stakeholder Engagement Relational Analyst Ms. Melosy Au and Asia Pacific Manager Yen Ms. Yien Chyn Tan were present.
In the meeting, Bangladesh welcomed the initiative taken by ICANN to make the internet multilingual friendly. Also, ICANN's assistance is sought on how to increase usage of Bangla Top Level Domains (TLDs). As well as achieving Universal Acceptance (UA) quickly, Next Round Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are called for to start quickly. In the discussion, ICANN leaders assured that Bengali language must be given importance when gTLDs starts. It was also confirmed in this meeting that Bangladesh will be the leader of Bengali language on the Internet.
Regarding the meeting, BIGF Secretary General Mohammad Abdul Haque said, regarding the Unicode Consortium, he said that Bangla script has no identity in Unicode. As a result, there is a risk of DNS Abuse or Phishing in the Bangla Top Level Domain in the future. For this reason, problems are visible in Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics in the case of using Bangla script. ICANN has requested support for the letters য়, ড়, ঢ় (. + য = য়, . + ড = ড়, . + ঢ = ঢ়) to resolve this issue. We have received positive response in this regard.
He also said that besides Bengali, three other issues are prioritized in bilateral discussions. These are cyber security DNS abuse, phishing attacks and research; Ensuring representation of Bangladesh in Unicode Consortium and The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of ICANN.
It is to be noted that, generic top level domains or gTLDs are domains assigned to common names or places such as .Bangladesh (.Bangladesh), .Dhaka, .Sunderbans, .Ilish, .Jamdani etc.
