UA community, please add your thoughts to this critical matter that just got released for Public Comment: "the circumstance where a base ASCII generic top-level domain (gTLD) and the Latin script diacritic version of the gTLD are not variants of each other, and where currently no mechanism exists that allows a single registry operator to simultaneously operate both gTLDs." This is something that I have been leading in the GNSO Council for several months, but it's out of our hands and into the community's hands now. The issue we are trying to address is that, for example, the city of São Paulo cannot own both ".saopaulo" and ".sãopaulo" and manage them in a coherent way. For Latin speakers this doesn't make sense, as while functionally they are not variants, it's still the way the city's name got written in ASCII throughout the Internet's history so far due to a lack of UA. In other words, if we want to see Latin language geos and words actually try moving to their UA versions, we need a policy that allows them to have the safety of an ASCII fallback while also being able to innovate. Otherwise, it's such a risky proposition for them that we will repeat what happened last time, in which ".quebec" only applied for their ASCII while actively desiring to own and operate ".québec". Find it here and make sure to socialize it to relevant allies: https://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/proceeding/preliminary-issue-report-... Best, -- Mark W. Datysgeld Director at Governance Primer [governanceprimer.com <https://governanceprimer.com>] ICANN GNSO Councilor