.eh

As Western Sahara is a disputed territory, it has no country code top-level domain (ccTLD), but .eh is reserved for that purpose. IANA has no sponsoring organizations assigned to this domain.^[1]

These letters correspond to "Sáhara Español" (ESH, as Western Sahara was previously called Spanish Sahara) and also match Saguia el-Hamra, one of two provinces in the earlier Spanish Sahara^[2].

On August 1, 2007, an international consortium made a bid to the IANA to administer the .eh domain on behalf of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic^[3]. Morocco has made competing claims to the domain.^[4]

On October 16, 2007, ICANN decided not to delegate .eh at all, under the pretext that "there are currently two applicants for the delegation of the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .EH (Western Sahara). Both requests meet the technical criteria for managing a top-level domain. In cases like this, IANA has a long-standing policy of requesting that the two contesting applicants work together to find a mutual solution that will serve the needs of the local Internet community in the best possible fashion. ICANN does not see a way to approve the .EH ccTLD delegation to one of the applicants without violating its long-standing policy unless the contesting parties are able to reach an agreement".^[5] This effectively disables the domain, as evidently no "agreement" is possible given that the competing applicant is a government of occupation.

[edit] References

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