Internet User’s Voice in Internet Policy Development : ALAC
Tuesday, May 1st, 2007
in 30th Aril 2007 a great progress in building at-large structure within ICANN and their role to reflect the voices of internet users and provide advice to the board. my organization was the third accredited at-large certified structure or ALS as on ICANN terminology 
in 2003 but i was disappointed from the slow progress in building at-large structures that time.
Finally in Dec 2006 the Latin American ALSs have managed to form their regional at-large organization “LACRLO” and signed an MOU with ICANN Brazil meeting, and later in 2007 the African & European internet organizations had meetings in Lisbon to establish their regional at-large organizations and elect new members representing the two regions to ICANN at-Large advisory committee ‘ALAC” which was important step toward building structured forum to provide input/comments in ICANN policy developments in a bottom-up process .
The challenge for ALAC and at-large regional organization is to provide the needed tools that could facilitate and ensure participation of internet users in ICANN policy discussions, local at-large structures “ALS” should be encouraged and supported to provide local awareness on issues related to ICANN issues .
In the developing countries this will be a big task bearing in mind that there is other hot burning issues related to ICT and internet developments in general, lack of internet access, expensive services costs, lack of local content development and a long list of issues that is considered more important than ICANN current policy debates, but i believe that we need to be available and participate effectively and have a voices heard .