Summary

  • AFRINIC’s Bylaws Review Committee closed its third formal consultation on 30 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC.
  • In a 14 September RPD exchange, the PDWG co-chair ruled out further article-by-article Bylaws review on that list; participants then asked how that limit applied to discussion of policy effects.

Two routes, one governance question

The Bylaws Review Committee (BRC) said on 25 August that its third consultation would remain open through 30 August at 23:59 UTC. The notice invited further input while the committee reviewed submissions from the earlier round. That deadline closed this formal channel for comments on draft constitutional articles.

On 14 September, Qhawe Ngubane posted to the Resource Policy Discussion (RPD) list about proposed nomination-assessment provisions. His message recognized that list correspondence did not replace a formal BRC submission. It also argued that candidate-assessment rules could affect the community’s relationship with the Policy Development Process (PDP), because the Board has a role in ratifying policy proposals.

At 09:20 UTC, PDWG Co-Chair Haitham El-Nakhal said RPD was not the dedicated list for reviewing Bylaws articles and noted that the third consultation had closed. He said further article-review discussion would not be accepted there. Fundiswa Nadia Maseko later accepted that formal submissions had ended but distinguished them from debate about how proposed governance changes could affect the PDP and community participation. She asked which agreed list rule supported the boundary.

At 15:09 UTC, El-Nakhal described RPD as a forum for proposing and discussing Internet number-resource policy proposals, linked AFRINIC’s PDP page and said the Bylaws issue was unrelated to the list. The page says anyone can propose and discuss policy proposals, with discussion mainly on RPD and at Public Policy Meetings. It describes the policy process; it does not set out a test for routing a comment about a constitutional provision’s claimed effects on that process after the BRC deadline.

The exchange leaves two distinct acts on the record: a formal submission to a constitutional review and an argument about the consequences of governance rules for policy participation. The RPD archive remains public. Through 8 October, its date index shows no later message in this exchange. That is not evidence of removal, a speaking ban or a formal ruling about constitutional authority. It is a narrow record of a channel dispute whose practical boundary was not fully explained in the thread.

Sources