What is the Empowered Community?
The Empowered Community is the mechanism through which ICANN's Supporting Organizations (SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs) can organize under California law to legally enforce community powers. The community powers and rules that govern the Empowered Community are defined in the ICANN Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws.
Who can participate in the Empowered Community?
All of ICANN's SOs, as well as the At-Large and Governmental ACs, can participate in the Empowered Community including:
• Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO)
• Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO)
• At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC)
• Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC)
How does the Empowered Community use their powers?
The Empowered Community has a process to raise concerns with an action or inaction made by the ICANN Board or organization. This escalation process gives SOs and ACs opportunities to discuss solutions with the ICANN Board.
What Are the Community Powers?
The Community has nine powers to ensure the ICANN Board and Organization are accountable:
• Reject standard Bylaw amendments
• Reject PTI governance actions
• Approve fundamental Bylaw and Articles amendments, and asset sales
• Recall the entire ICANN Board
• Appoint and remove individual ICANN Board directors (other than the President)
• Require the ICANN Board to review its rejection of IANA Function Review (IFR),special IFR, Separation Cross-Community Working Group (SCWG) creation,and SCWG recommendation decisions
• Initiate community reconsideration request, mediation, or Independent Review Process (IRP)
• The rights of inspection and investigation
Click on this infographic to explore the Empowered Community's Powers:
العربية [PDF, 225 KB]
Español [PDF, 140 KB]
Français [PDF, 140 KB] Pусский [PDF, 161 KB]
中文 [PDF, 209 KB]
![Empowered community infographic](/uploads/ckeditor/Empowered_community_microcontent_01_TW_440x220.png)
Ongoing Actions
Upcoming Actions
- No upcoming actions found.
Meetings and Forums
- 26 Oct 2023Empowered Community's Cross Community Forum on Proposed Fundamental Bylaws Amendments
- 03 Nov 2019Empowered Community’s Cross Community Forum on Proposed Fundamental Bylaws Amendments
- 27 Jun 2017Empowered Community’s Cross Community Forum on Proposed Fundamental Bylaws Amendments
Archive
- 17 Nov 2023
- 07 Oct 2023
- 30 May 2023
- 30 May 2023
- 30 Mar 2023
- 18 Jun 2022
- 18 Jun 2022
- 31 May 2022
- 31 Mar 2022
- 11 Jun 2021
- 11 Jun 2021
- 15 Mar 2021
- 06 Jun 2020
- 06 Jun 2020
- 21 Feb 2020
- 29 Nov 2019
- 05 Oct 2019
- 05 Oct 2019
- 24 Jul 2019
- 30 May 2019
- 01 Mar 2019
- 22 Jun 2018
- 09 Jun 2018
- 03 Mar 2018
- 21 Jul 2017
- 17 Jul 2017
- 17 Jul 2017
- 17 Jul 2017