[council] update: GNSO Council small team on GNSO next steps to implement WS2 recommendations

[Tatiana Tropina]

Dear Councillors,


as some of you might remember, there was an agenda item on WS2
implementation update at our last meeting in 2020. For the Council meeting
in January, we have a pretty packed agenda. Therefore, the leadership
decided to update you on the WS2 small team's work (in the context of the
broader community work on this) via email.


We will get back to this topic in the next meetings. For now, I would like
to share the updates (below). Please let me know if you have any questions
-- happy to answer.


The small team of GNSO Councillors had a task to go through the WS2
recommendations and (1) see which recommendations concern the GNSO
Council's remit and (2) prioritise them. You can see the result of this
work -- a big Table with prioritisation -- attached to this email as a PDF
document.


The group considers the following recommendations important for the GNSO
Council in the next steps to implement WS2 recommendations:


*Topic 2. Guidelines for Standards of Conduct Presumed to be in Good Faith
Associated with Exercising Removal of Individual ICANN Board Directors*

*Relevance to the GNSO Council:* partially relevant.

*Priority:* high.

*Suggested action: *we decided to follow up with drafters of previous GNSO
guidelines to see what has been addressed already and whether the existing
GNSO Guidelines on Bylaw obligations as a Decisional Participant provide
sufficient flexibility to satisfy WS2 rec 2.1.2.

Heather Forrest, who chaired the group, which drafted the existing
guidelines, believes that there is no need to update the Guidelines in the
intermediate terms because they are not in conflict with the WS2
requirements and there is nothing preventing the applicant of the
Guidelines from satisfying the WS2 requirements when following the process
as outlined in the Guidelines. However, in the long term, it might be
beneficial to make an explicit reference to the additional requirements of
WS2; these WS2 recommendations can be included in the list of items for
consideration if/when the Council decides to launch the review of these
Guidelines.


*Topic 3. Framework of Interpretation for Human Rights *

*Relevance to the GNSO Council:* fully relevant.

*Priority: *medium to high

*Suggested action: *the prioritization level of implementing this
recommendation is to be discussed by the GNSO Council.


*Topic 4. Jurisdiction. **Subtopic: absence of a choice of law provision in
the base RA*

*Relevance to the GNSO Council: *partially relevant

*Priority: *medium

*Suggested action: *Recommendation considers Contracted Parties.  Coordination
among the GNSO Council/SGs/Cs may be needed for implementing this
recommendation. SGs/Cs should be made aware of this recommendation and
report back to the Council on their assessment.


*Topic 6. Increase SO/AC Accountability*

*Relevance to the GNSO Council: *partially relevant

*Priority: *medium

*Suggested action: *The GNSO Council has already been in compliance with
some of the recommendations. The implementation of them is ongoing.
Substantive consideration of these issues could form part of the GNSO3
review.


Currently, the ICANN community and ICANN Org are preparing an overview of
the views on the implementation of WS2 recommendations. The Council's views
on this will be considered together with prioritisation considerations by
other parts of the community and, of course, the ICANN Org. the situation
is currently developing, and we can hopefully go back to this work soon and
get some updates when the data is aggregated.

Warm regards,

Tanya
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