Particular criticism of the UIA approach in demonstrating support relates to the information it presented in a chart in the UIA proposal (included below) and an appendix [Appendix D] presented as a sampling of international non-profit organizations that regularly update their profile in the UIA Yearbook of International Organizations.

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The following text is based on extracts from Sections C35 and C36 of the UIA's proposal to ICANN.
It includes subsequent comments in red italics to correct any impression of misrepresentation of the nature of that support.

Methodology – evidence - questions

In response to the need for the analysis of public support for .org bids delegated to the Noncommercial Domain Name Holders Constituency (NCDNHC), the Union of International Associations (UIA) hopes that the NCDNHC keeps the following points in mind when reviewing the various applications:

The .org TLD is on the one hand highly successful, with its registrant base of 2.6 million and a fourth position worldwide. On the other hand it has not yet succeeded in establishing for itself the unique profile that would enable it to both gain long-term registrant loyalty and enter into constructive dialogue regarding the potential for and viability of services specifically for civil society in its broadest sense.

A variety of indicators can be presented in evidence of UIA responsiveness to the interests and concerns of different constituencies in the non-commercial community over the past decades.

Statutory obligation

The UIA statutes (last modified in 1986, following transformation into an institute in 1953) specify its aims to be:

The UIA has survived in a country overrun by two World Wars, and the following period in which international documentation was subject to considerable Cold War pressures applied through intergovernmental institutions to distort the realities with which individual organizations had to deal. Although the UIA does not associate itself with advocacy on particular concerns, in accordance with its documentalist culture, it exhibited strong resistance to efforts to curtail or misrepresent information from any sector throughout that period.

The UIA has specialized for nearly a century in registering a variety of entities of international significance, according to opportunity and within the constraints of circumstances and resources.

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Top Level Domain (TLD) assignments