Summary

  • The NRO Executive Council announced on 28 July that the ASO Address Council had completed version 3 of the RIR Governance Document, formally delivered the Recommended Draft and transferred responsibility for it to the NRO EC.
  • The handoff was not approval or adoption. The NRO EC said it would review the draft, coordinate with ICANN and the RIRs and progress a pathway toward a final version.
  • Version 3, its rationale, the version 2-to-3 redline, the revised timetable and any further public-input opportunity were deferred to later publication. At the 12 August check, the NRO’s document index still called version 2 the current draft.
  • Earlier public reports identify unresolved questions about recognition, audits, derecognition, emergency continuity, transition and resource-holder rights. Without the new text, nobody outside the handoff can verify how version 3 answers them.

Responsibility moved; inspectability did not

The most consequential sentence in the NRO announcement is not that drafting finished. It is that “responsibility for the document” transitioned from the ASO AC to the NRO EC.

That is a real procedural event. The council that gathered comments and drafted the text has handed it to the executive body that will review it, coordinate with ICANN and the five RIRs, and steer the path toward a final version. AFRINIC reproduced that event on its homepage, making the global process part of the registry’s current public governance record.

But readers could not inspect the object that changed hands. The NRO said the Recommended Draft would be published separately. The same was true of the document explaining the main changes from version 2 and the comparison or redline showing those changes. An updated timeline was promised “soon”; future opportunities for input and further process information were left for later communication.

The distinction is important. A handoff can be verified from an announcement. The allocation of power inside the handed-off text cannot.

Recommended is not adopted

The announcement sets a clear limit on what happened. Version 3 is an ASO AC Recommended Draft. The NRO EC still has to consider it, coordinate the next stages and work toward a final version. The process page says the NRO EC and ICANN will determine approval and adoption procedures. None of those later acts was reported as complete on 28 July.

It would therefore be inaccurate to say a new governance regime is already binding. It would be equally inaccurate to dismiss the handoff as clerical. Once drafting responsibility moves, the institution controlling the next publication, coordination and decision timetable changes. The public needs the text precisely because the document concerns who can recognise, audit, sustain or derecognise the institutions that administer Internet number resources.

The 2026 ASO AC work plan anticipated final-draft work in July and August, presentations to RIR communities in September and October, and preparations for ICANN and NRO approval in November. The July announcement now says a revised timeline will govern those final stages. Until that revision appears, the old work plan is context, not a dependable current deadline.

Version 2 shows why the missing delta matters

Version 2 was published on 28 August 2025 with a redline and a rationale explaining changes from the first draft. That combination let a reader separate three questions: what the operative draft said, what wording changed, and why the drafters accepted or rejected competing suggestions.

The May 2026 status report shows that major issues were still moving after version 2. Recognition review and the threshold for recognising a new RIR were in progress. So were the triggers for derecognition and ad hoc audits, and the threshold for starting or renewing emergency continuity.

The report recorded that version 2 allowed a derecognition proposal from any RIR, a group representing 25% of the affected registry’s members or 2,000 members—whichever was lower—or ICANN. The NRO NC said it would keep the derecognition threshold but was still considering whether an ad hoc audit should have a lower threshold.

Emergency continuity was another unsettled control point. Version 2 required all other RIRs and ICANN to agree before the mechanism began. Commenters warned that unanimity could be too slow in an urgent failure and that renewals needed clearer oversight. The drafting body said it would consider lower thresholds and clearer, more transparent procedures.

Transition and audit duties were also under revision. The report promised text requiring a transition plan to protect service continuity and resource-holder rights. It also promised clarity about what an RIR must do after an audit. These are not drafting niceties. They determine who can act, what evidence triggers action, who bears delay and whether operators can preserve service when an institution fails.

No one can responsibly report how version 3 resolved those questions until version 3 is public.

Consultation is evidence, not authorisation

The NRO can point to a substantial participation record. Principles were consulted on in 2024. A first draft went through RIR and ICANN consultation in 2025. Version 2 received a second consultation, followed by workshops, meeting presentations and status reports. The July announcement fairly credits those inputs.

That record answers whether people had opportunities to speak. It does not, by itself, answer who authorised the final distribution of decision rights.

Heng Lu’s Note 73 supplies the necessary distinction: a stakeholder is affected by a decision; a principal authorises it. Comments, meetings and expertise can improve a text and expose risk. They do not automatically allow a participating room or institutional network to bind absent resource holders.

For this document, the principal test is concrete. Who can initiate an audit? Who decides an RIR has failed? Whose consent begins emergency operation? Who chooses an interim operator? What rights do members have to challenge, leave or preserve their number-resource state? What power belongs to ICANN, the other RIRs, the affected registry and its members?

Institutional phrases such as “community,” “consensus,” “stewardship” and “stability” cannot answer those questions. Only the operative clauses can.

The AFRINIC test is power, not branding

The revision arose against the practical problem of RIR failure, a problem made impossible to ignore by AFRINIC’s governance crisis. Heng Lu’s Note 17 accepts the need for a failure standard. Its objection is to using that necessity to centralise de-accreditation and re-accreditation power in NRO or ICANN rather than making decisive action member-driven and bottom-up.

Note 25 sharpens the same test. The risk lies in implementation power: whether a coordinating framework becomes a permission system that restricts entry, blocks exit and makes incumbent institutions effectively irreplaceable. Note 6 identifies portability as the hard safeguard. If a network cannot move its verified IP or ASN relationship away from a failing registry, accountability remains dependent on winning inside the gatekeeper.

Those propositions cannot be scored against version 3 yet. The text may preserve, change or reject parts of version 2; the public record does not say. The correct challenge is not to invent a hostile clause. It is to require the NRO EC to publish the exact document and delta before asking anyone to accept its description of the outcome.

AFRINIC’s repost does not validate its purported Board, the Receiver, their supporters or any lock-in policy. Nor does a global Recommended Draft automatically grant them new authority. The handoff shows that a consequential governance instrument has entered its executive phase. It does not settle the separate legitimacy of the actors now speaking for AFRINIC.

A publishable control record

The NRO EC has already named the minimum disclosure package: version 3, the rationale and the redline. It should publish those materials together, with stable dates and hashes, rather than separating a policy claim from the evidence needed to reproduce it.

The updated timeline should identify when NRO EC review begins and ends, which changes it may make, when ICANN and each RIR act, what constitutes approval, how dissent is recorded and whether another input window occurs before adoption. If the NRO EC changes the ASO AC draft, a second redline should show that executive delta as well.

For every unresolved topic in the May report, a compact decision table would improve the record: version 2 rule, issue raised, version 3 disposition, decision maker, rationale and remaining implementation procedure. That would let members distinguish consultation history from actual authority.

Publishing later may be consistent with the planned sequence. The NRO has previously published a comparison package, and its announcement openly says more material is coming. Those are significant counterweights to any claim of deliberate concealment.

They do not remove the present condition. Responsibility has moved. Public inspectability has not caught up. Until it does, the only defensible conclusion is procedural: a draft with potential consequences for AFRINIC members and network operators is now in executive custody, while the evidence required to audit its allocation of power remains outstanding.

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