ICANN Announces Standing Panel for Independent Review Process

Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announces the first 12 members of the Independent Review Process (IRP) Standing Panel:

Giuditta Cordero-Moss
Utku Cosar
Christopher Gibson
Nicholas Gould
Ben Juratowitch
Madeline Kimei
Ann LaFrance
Stephen Larson
John Lowe
Mark Morril
Christof Siefarth
Reynaldo Urtiaga Escobar

Information about each panelist is available on the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR) website. ICDR is ICANN's IRP provider.

The formation of a Standing Panel represents the completion of a process intended to streamline and ensure consistency in ICANN's consideration of disputes that challenge its accountability.

The IRP is a critical accountability mechanism that enables ICANN community members to seek third-party reviews of actions of the ICANN Board or staff alleged to be inconsistent with the ICANN Articles of Incorporation or Bylaws. The ICANN community recommended significant updates to the IRP through the efforts of the Cross-Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability Workstream 1. Those updates included defining a process for how members of a Standing Panel of dispute resolution professionals would be identified in coordination with the ICANN community.

A call for expressions of interest to serve on the IRP Standing Panel resulted in 99 submissions. Following that, the ICANN organization (org) and the Community Representatives Group (CRG), supported by an outside recruitment professional, collaborated on the evaluation of candidates. The CRG, a seven-person group of ICANN community members, then recommended the slate for the first IRP Standing Panel to the ICANN Board for its consideration.

In January 2024, the Board approved a 12-member slate for the IRP Standing Panel. Since January, the ICANN org team has been coordinating with the panelists and the ICDR to make sure that the panelists are onboarded and ready to hear IRPs. With all panelist contracts completed, all work in advance of announcing the panel composition has concluded.

With the Standing Panel in place, community members can now select from the 12 available panelists to hear IRP disputes filed with the ICDR.

ICANN's mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address - a name or a number - into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a nonprofit public benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.