Sri Lankan Lawyer elected to Internet Regulatory body

In a move that would enhance Sri Lanka's image in the Internet governance arena, a Sri Lanka based Attorney, Jayantha Fernando, has been unanimously elected to as Vice Chairman of the ICANN Government Advisory Committee (GAC). The other two elected Vice Chairs are Diagne Maimouna Diop of Senegal and Heather Dryden of Canada. The election became effective at the recently concluded Nairobi meeting.

Fernando's name was proposed by the ICANN-GAC Chair, Ambassador Janis Karklins, and the nomination received support from Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Sudan, Ghana, Nigeria, Tonga, Union Des Comoros, Brazil, Kuwait, Morocco, Senegal, Bermuda, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, France, Slovakia, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, US and UK.

The US based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was created in 1998 and assumed the responsibility for the technical functions previously performed by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) under US government contract. ICANN's present mission is "to coordinate the global Internet's systems of unique identifiers, and to ensure the stability and security of the global Internet. In particular, ICANN coordinates the allocation and assignment of the three sets of unique identifiers for the Internet, which are (a) Domain names (forming a system referred to as "DNS"); (b) Internet protocol ("IP") addresses and autonomous system ("AS") numbers; and (c) Protocol port and parameter numbers.