Summary

  • AFRINIC’s DRAFT02 ties its exceptional policy-ratification petition to a specific institutional state: no duly constituted and operative Board.
  • If an operative Board declines to ratify, the draft instead requires reasons and sends the issue back to the Policy Development Working Group; the petition is not written as a general appeal over that decision.

The signatures are not the first test

A petition supported by 15 people can still fail to open the route described in AFRINIC’s latest PDP proposal. The first question is not how many names appear on it. It is whether the institution has crossed the condition in section 3.3.11: “no duly constituted and operative Board of Directors.”

That phrase matters because DRAFT02 sets out two different ways a policy can encounter a Board. If the Board exists and resolves not to ratify a draft, it must publish a reasoned decision. The Working Group then discusses that decision and determines what to do next. The petition clause appears only in the next state, where there is no duly constituted and operative Board. A disagreement with a Board is therefore not, by itself, the trigger for the exceptional route.

The distinction is easy to lose in the proposal’s summary, which describes a petition where the Board is prevented from acting or refuses ratification without reasons. The operative clause gives the petition a narrower institutional condition. That is the language a future operator would need to apply.

Version two changed the trigger

The route is not merely a cleaned-up copy of the first draft. DRAFT01 described a petition after a policy supported by the PDWG failed to receive Board ratification because of inability or refusal without reasons for 60 days. DRAFT02 separates a Board decision from a Board that is no longer duly constituted and operative. A reasoned refusal returns to Working Group discussion; the petition is attached to Board absence.

The procedural history sets a boundary around that comparison. At AFRINIC-37, the authors said they were not seeking consensus on DRAFT01, and the Co-Chairs later recorded that no consensus determination had been made at the authors’ request. On 12 August the proposal was returned to the RPD list for revision. DRAFT02 was submitted later and is still listed as Under Discussion. This is a change in proposed text, not a change in AFRINIC’s adopted policy.

A limited failover, with named controls

DRAFT02 does not make the petition automatic. A member of the PDWG may initiate it, but it needs support from at least 15 members who are registered contacts of distinct AFRINIC Resource Members and who come from at least three subregions. A new staff analysis must follow. If staff finds no new issue, the proposal says it must be considered ratified and implemented by staff.

Those conditions are control points, not evidence that a petition has been used. The draft does not establish that AFRINIC currently lacks an operative Board, that a policy is awaiting a decision, or that staff has been asked to implement anything. The operational record would need to identify the Board state, the policy version, the supporters’ eligibility, the staff analysis and the resulting implementation act. Without those records, the number 15 does not answer whether the right procedure was used.

The draft also preserves a separate Board role. Section 3.3.12 says that the Board retains residual statutory authority and fiduciary responsibility for AFRINIC’s management, oversight and affairs. Read with section 3.3.11, the proposal describes a narrow continuity route for Board absence, not a general transfer of the Board’s legal responsibilities to the PDWG or the proposed Regional Number Council.

The Council cannot amend the Bylaws by itself

The proposed failover depends on rules outside the CPM. DRAFT02 says it requires amendment of Bylaws section 11.2 and the NRO NC member-election process. That is not incidental housekeeping. The current Bylaws text assigns the annual Public Policy Meeting call to the Board. DRAFT02 would assign that call to the Regional Number Council.

The proposed Council itself would combine the PDWG Co-Chairs, two community-elected NRO NC members and one Board-appointed NRO NC member. Its membership and decisions therefore depend on an election process that the proposal separately says must change. The Board-appointed seat may provide continuity while an appointment is in force, but it is not a substitute for specifying what happens when that appointment expires or cannot be renewed.

The 2026 Election Guidelines remain the current election reference for this year. They define their own candidate, voter and registration rules. A future CPM amendment cannot silently replace them: the associated election process needs its own approved text, effective date and transition rule. The same applies to the Bylaws amendment that would move the PPM call.

DRAFT02 also cites the new RIR Governance Document. The NRO’s Version 3 page labels it an ASO AC Recommended Draft, while the published process timeline says it was delivered to the NRO EC and remained in the Q3/Q4 finalization process. The proposal’s stated alignment is not proof that the global document has been adopted.

The decision record should show the state

For operators and policy participants, the useful deliverable is a synchronized change record. It should identify the exact CPM text, the Bylaws amendment, the NRO NC election rules, the body approving each change, their effective dates, and the procedure for a Board decision, a reasoned refusal and the absence of an operative Board. The staff review and implementation record belong in that same chain.

Until those texts and approvals exist, DRAFT02 is a proposal under discussion. It presents a way to keep policy work moving if the Board is not operative, but its petition is not a standing override for a Board decision. The difference between those two states is the boundary on its continuity promise.

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