AFAAWG Charter

AFAAWG will serve as a convening forum for operators in the African Internet service region that want to develop anti-abuse recommendations and best common practices (BCP) in cooperation with global anti-abuse communities and network operator communities.  Anti-abuse BCP development will work closely with existing BCOP (Best Current Operational Practices) development processes in the African Internet ecosystem.

AFAAWG will foster dialog among experts in the AF region on abuse, with the objective of documenting these threats and developing anti-abuse best practices to mitigate the immediate threats, and, ideally, remediate the sources of those threats.  In effect, AFAAWG will serve as the organizational umbrella for developing a community of actors that can effectively exchange abuse information.

AFAAWG will also call for and coordinate presentations, from the AF and global anti-abuse communities, targeting fora in African Internet ecosystem relevant communities, in order to educate the AF community on and foster adoption of anti-abuse best practices and operations.  AFAAWG will also serve as an authoritative source of information on how abuse dynamics play out in the AF region and how they differ from the dynamics of similar types of abuse activities in other regions.  In these roles, AFAAWG will serve as the place of anti-abuse knowledge in the AF region, both helping to educate operators and serving as the voice of the AF region in the global anti-abuse community.

Structurally, there will be several leadership positions: four co-chairs will help coordinate AAWG activities and liaisons with participating stakeholder organizations.

Chairs’ activities include coordinating the e-mail list, sharing relevant links from adjacent security communities with the AAWG mailing list, identifying and fostering anti-abuse content and talks for AF* meetings, and facilitating the organizational objectives listed above.  The co-chairs’ commitment is purely coordination and management—the co-chairs may delegate management of tasks such as developing anti-abuse best practices documents and coordinating an abuse information exchange to relevant, engaged community members they trust will fulfill the obligations attendant to their task and follow the ethos of community development laid out in this charter.

Each leadership position, co-chairs and liaisons, have a two-year term.  The option to renew or replace co-chairs will alternate, with one renewed or replaced each year; the first of the initial co-chairs to be renewed will be agreed or selected randomly.  Before a co-chair steps down, the co-chairs, the liaisons will designate a successor.  The co-chairs will select liaisons in collaboration with organization the liaison represents.  At the request of the organization a liaison represents, a new liaison may be selected by the co-chairs and the represented organization to replace the existing liaison. The co-chairs, upon consensus after consultation, can appoint additional liaisons from other relevant organizations.