Under the patronage of His Majesty King Abdullah II and organized by Talal Abu-Ghazaleh International (TAGI) on behalf of the Arabic Working Group of the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC), the Jordanian capital, Amman, hosted the founders meeting of the Arabic Internet Names Consortium and the First Seminar on the Arabization of Domain Names on March 31 and April 1, 2001.
The Arabic Internet Names Consortium (AINC) was initilay prepared for during the ICANN November 13-16, 2000 meetings, when a meeting of MINC Arab Working Group was also held.
TAGI was elected to the task force, which would prepare for the formation of the Arabic Internet Names Consortium. AINC is an international organization drawing its membership and soliciting participation from organizations and individuals worldwide in an inclusive way.
AINC is founded to facilitate internationalization of the Internet for all Arabic speaking people of the world, allowing access without linguistic barriers at all levels. Representatives of governments, ministries, governmental and non-governmental bodies and diverse business interests from Jordan and other Arab countries attended the meetings in Amman, Jordan, for the founding of AINC.
During the meeting, a cooperation agreement was concluded between the Arabic Internet Names Consortium (AINC) and the Multinational Internet Names Consortium (MINC), providing for mutual recognition between the two bodies.
The Founders’ meeting was followed by the First Seminar for Arabizing the Internet. The seminar dealt with specialized technical papers presented by experts in this field, and allowed an opportunity for open discussions. After that the Amman Declaration was issued officially announcing foundation of the Arabic Internet Names Consortium.
For purposes of Arabization TAGI has been for some time monitoring, together with MINC Arab Working Group, the issue of supporting and consolidating Arab domain names.
This will make it easier for Arab users who are not proficient in a foreign language, and will also enhance the Arabic language’s presence on all Internet sites. A meeting for this purpose was recently held in Dubai on October 29, 2000, after which it was decided to establish AINC. The Arabic language thus becomes one of the languages that can be used for registering domain names, together with other international languages.