Summary

  • ICANN's Public Comment index listed the closed IRP-IOT proceeding as awaiting a report due on 1 September 2026. Its Outcome field was still empty at this Article's cutoff.
  • ICANN's Bylaws make English the Independent Review Process's primary working language and require translation services for claimants if needed.
  • Current interim Rule 5B lets the translation request itself be non-English when a claimant certifies that an English request would be unduly burdensome.
  • Proposed Rule 5B requires both the initial statement of Dispute and the translation-services request in English.
  • The proposal also makes real improvements: no adverse inference from an English filing, urgent decisions, ICANN-paid ordered services, deadline flexibility and non-UN languages where necessary.
  • A multilingual preliminary intake receipt would preserve access at the first step without changing the English working language or deciding entitlement, standing or merits.

A pending report is not a new rule

The Independent Review Process is ICANN's external accountability mechanism for claims that covered Board or staff action violated the Articles or Bylaws. It is not an ordinary customer-support channel. The Bylaws describe its purposes in unusually demanding terms: expert review should be meaningful, affordable and accessible, while the proceeding is administered in English as its primary working language and translation is provided when needed.

The Implementation Oversight Team published proposed changes to the supplementary procedures in July 2024. The consultation covered panel selection, filing time, translation and third-party participation. Nine submissions were posted. At the cutoff for this Article, ICANN's current Public Comment index placed the proceeding under Pending Reports and showed 1 September 2026 as the report due date. The proceeding's Outcome field was blank.

That state must be read carefully. The draft is neither the existing rule nor a reported final decision. A due date does not reveal what the summary will say. This Article examines the text still before the institution because it exposes a specific design choice at the entrance to review.

The interim rule protects one narrow first step

Interim Rule 5B, adopted in October 2018, is not a general promise of multilingual litigation. The panel decides whether a claimant needs translation, which materials or hearings are covered and which language will be used. A claimant who is not found to need the service must submit materials in English. The rule ordinarily limits translation to Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish alongside English.

But it preserves one important exception. The request for translation services may itself be submitted outside English if the claimant certifies that filing that request in English would be unduly burdensome.

The exception is modest. It does not start the IRP in another language. It does not grant translation, prove standing, suspend time limits or decide which documents ICANN must pay to translate. It simply allows the panel to receive the claim that the English gate is the problem before requiring the claimant to solve that problem.

That sequencing is easy to overlook because it occupies a parenthesis in a longer rule. Institutionally, it is the front door.

The proposal makes the service wider behind the door

Proposed Rule 5B offers a much fuller service design. It names written statements, material documents, transcripts, decisions and oral interpretation as possible objects of assistance. A claimant may seek reimbursement for translating the initial dispute statement and may request that ICANN's response be translated into a preferred language. A request made with the statement does not consume the statement's page limit.

The panel would continue to decide need, scope and language. In an urgent case, an emergency panelist could decide translation before the full panel is seated. ICANN would coordinate ordered services through its language providers and pay them as an administrative cost unless a later order says otherwise. The panel could adjust document and appeal deadlines for translation delay.

The proposal also improves the language boundary. Where a claimant can participate fairly in several languages and one is an official UN language, that language should be used where possible. But a non-UN language is no longer categorically excluded when it is necessary for fair participation.

Those are material gains. A fair analysis should not reduce the draft to its gatekeeping flaw.

English is required twice before assistance can act

The same draft says the claimant's written statement of Dispute must be submitted in English. It then says any request for translation services must also be submitted in English, identify the preferred language, explain why the service is necessary, describe relevant language competence and fit the explanation within five double-spaced pages.

The text anticipates one obvious problem: using English to file must not be treated as evidence that the claimant does not need translation. That protection is valuable. It prevents successful compliance from defeating the application.

It does not solve the earlier problem of producing the English documents. A claimant who can retain English-speaking counsel or buy a certified translation can cross the gate and later ask for reimbursement or broader services. A claimant unable to arrange that first bridge must privately obtain the very capacity the public mechanism exists to assess.

The Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group identified the adjacent informational burden. It supported Rule 5B but warned that a request-only approach may disadvantage people who do not know they have a right to ask. It recommended proactive notice and an offer of translation at the outset.

Neither point proves that someone has already been excluded. The draft has not been adopted, and the reviewed public record does not identify such a claimant. The governance problem is that exclusion can occur before a formal decision produces a record. Cost, delay, misunderstanding or abandonment may keep the need request from reaching the panel at all.

Keep an intake route separate from the merits filing

The answer need not be automatic translation of every IRP document. That would be expensive, slow and disconnected from the Bylaws' need standard. Nor should a preliminary message in any language silently become the legally complete statement of Dispute.

ICANN can preserve a thinner interface: a multilingual preliminary intake request. It should accept a short message in any language its intake can identify, timestamp it and assign a neutral identifier. The acknowledgment, in the same language where practicable, should say exactly what has and has not been filed, which deadlines continue to run, whether any temporary protection applies and who will decide the service request.

The intake record should preserve the original message beside the provider-produced or certified English version. Corrections and disputed renderings should be appended, not silently overwritten. If urgent assistance is claimed, the receipt should show when the request reached the emergency decision route. If ICANN stipulates to service, that act should be distinct from a panel determination.

The public side can remain aggregate. ICANN could report request languages, disposition classes, response times, translation intervals and costs without naming claimants or exposing disputes. A system that receives no requests in a large linguistic community would then have a monitoring signal, not proof that nobody needed help.

This is consistent with Heng Lu's useful distinction between access and mandate. Receiving a preliminary need request does not give the sender authority, win the dispute or bind ICANN. It lets the competent process see whether its own entrance prevents the participation the Bylaws promise to make accessible.

The improvement is preserving the exception while modernising the service

The proposal should not be framed as simply more inclusive or less inclusive than the interim rule. It is broader in what happens after approval and narrower in how a claimant can ask for approval. The institutional choice is to keep the broader service without losing the modest non-English entry route already present.

Nothing in this conclusion changes English as the primary working language. It does not presume that a claimant needs translation, promise every document in a preferred language or remove panel control. It restores the order of operations: identify the barrier, decide assistance, then require the formal English bridge that the proceeding needs.

An accountability mechanism should not make a person demonstrate language need only after overcoming it. The current rule already contains the seed of a better design. The pending process should preserve it visibly.

Sources

  1. ICANN Public Comment index
  2. IRP-IOT proposed updates proceeding
  3. Clean proposed supplementary-rule changes
  4. Redline proposal with IRP-IOT rationales
  5. 2018 Interim Supplementary Procedures
  6. NCSG submission
  7. ICANN Bylaws, Article 4.3
  8. Heng Lu, The Multi-Stakeholder Mirage