Application Comment Details

The UniForum application grants Legal or Executive Responsibility to Mr. Mohammed El-Bashir who has no Legal Role or Executive Responsibility in UniForum.

In answer to Question no. 11(d) (For an applying entity that does not have directors, officers, partners, or shareholders: Name(s) and position(s) of all individuals having legal or executive responsibility) the application for .AFRICA that was submitted by UniForum ZA CR indicates that Mr. Mohammed El-Bashir has Legal or Executive Responsibility over the gTLD application.

The web site URL of the UniForum application has been indicated (Question 5) as http://www.AfricaInOneSpace.org. Based on what the people associated with this application have publicly admitted to, we understand that Africa In One Space is not a legally registered entity, but simply a URL.

Mr. Mohammed El-Bashir is described as the Chairperson of the dotAfrica Steering Committee under the Africa In One Space web site, but this organ (Steering Committee) has no legal establishment. Question 11d is meant for applying entities without directors or officers, but UniForum clearly has directors as indicated in their answer to Question 11(a). (Name(s) and position(s) of all directors) which lists the names of the directors of Uniforum as Calvin Scott Browne, Neil Duncan Dundas, Mark James Elkins, Theodorus Kramer and Fiona Jean Wallace.

Why should the Legal and Executive Responsibility for the UniForum .Africa application be given to somebody (Mohammed El Bashir) who simply represents a URL? What type of legal and executive responsibility would someone like Mohammed El Bashir, who appears to be acting on behalf of the African Internet Community, exercise over a non-Community TLD application for .Africa submitted by UniForum ZA Central Registry?

We think that granting legal or executive responsibility of UniForum’s .AFRICA application to somebody who is obviously not a director of UniForum is a deliberate misrepresentation with the intention to obfuscate the true legal and or executive responsibility over the UniForum application for .AFRICA. Moreover, Mr. Mohammed El-Bashir has no legal or executive role in UniForum. He is neither a director nor a management executive of the organization, so we believe that mentioning him as the person having Legal or Executive Responsibility over the application for .AFRICA submitted by UniForum is not only misleading but legally incongruous and rather problematic. The application already lists the directors of UniForum, so there is no legal basis for the same application to grant legal or executive authority to Mr. Mohammed El-Bashir who is not a director of UniForum.

Again, we believe that this is one way of giving the ‘African Internet Community’ and or so-called dotAfrica Steering Committee and/or Africa In One Space, illegitimate organs or bodies indicated in the URL http://www.africainonespace.org that have been constituted without any form of legal establishment, a community oversight role over the UniForum Application, but without actually designating the UniForum application as a Community TLD application.

Therefore, it is important for the ICANN Evaluation to understand that UniForum as applicant is being used as a ‘front’ to enable certain groups who have no proper legal establishment to accomplish their illegitimate ownership designs over the .AFRICA gTLD, and the application should be disqualified or failed by the ICANN Evaluation for this reason.