[rpd] Appeal Committee Terms of Reference (Version 1)

[Andrew Alston]

Comments inline

Some few comments though:
1. Section 2.2 needs to explicitly include the complainant as
ineligible to be on this committee. I believe this addition will make
4.2 easier to implement.

Am not sure this makes sense in terms of a standing committee – since there is no way to pre-determine who will make a complaint.  I believe that the whole point of 4.2 was to negate this point – so I don’t agree with the assertion made above.

2. The same section 3.5 of the PDP speaks of a Recall Committee. I
think it would be wise to make provisions for the two committees now,
rather than leaving the Recall Committee for later

Not sure I agree with you on this one Douglas – because the recall committee specifically under section 3.5 excludes people calling for the recall – and hence, the comments above apply.  I also consider the need for a standing recall committee to be extreme – because it pre-supposes that members of the appeal committee may be regularly recalled.

3. I think the composition of the committee favours the co-chairs,
which might be at the expense of the complainant. I would propose
replacing seat 2 with a community member.

I don’t have an issue with this – though I would rather than a member of the community add a further international person divorced from conflict on any proposal affecting members in the AFRINIC region.  As I argued right at the start of this process – members of the AFRINIC community who are normally contributing towards policy development are in most cases directly interested in the outcome of the proposal (since in most cases they have direct ties to entities affected by said policies – and this would result in a regular activation of clause 4.2)

4. 3.1.2 speaks of “appropriate office” this wording should be defined
or replaced. It is very open to interpretation and could cause another
committee just to review the Board’s decision :-)

Again – I am not sure I agree – because I believe the definition of appropriate office is defined in section 2.1.b, at most, this would need to say appropriate office as per the terms set out in section 2.1.b.

5. I find 4.3 unrealistic. I doubt that any committee would have
control over a timeline. I propose to instead give a cap, say of 3
months.

In two minds here – I would prefer they publish a timeline but the timeline is also capped – so – they still have to give some indication of timeline – but it cannot exceed X amount of time (to avoid inordinate delays)

6. Additionally, we need to address what happens to actions that are
predicated on decisions under appeal. For instance, if a member calls
into question the decision to send a policy for ratification, after
last call, I don’t see any provisions to halt the ratification process
pending the hearing, and how such a halt will affect the prescribed
PDP timelines.

This point we are in total agreement on – and I would say that any decision pending appeal is automatically put on hold – the board cannot legitimately ratify something that is under appeal for example, because that would risk a situation where a ratification had to be reversed all over again should the appeal go a certain way.

As a final comment – I would also like the ToR’s to specify that a decision of the appeal committee is based on simple majority – otherwise we end up in a real mess when the arguments about what constitutes an appeal committee final decision come about.

Regards

Andrew

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