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Why is it that Kosovo still hasn't got its own ccTLD?

Kosovo is (semi)-independent, from Serbia (former Yugoslavia), since 2008. Montenegro is independent since 2006. Montenegro has the .me domain since its year of independence.

Even Palestine (which isn't fully recognized) has its own ccTLD.

pauska
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Duco
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    A ccTLD isn't always associated with a real-world political entity. The domain for the former Soviet Union still exists as `.su`. http://nic.su/dns/domain/su.html – Stefan Lasiewski Jan 19 '15 at 17:31
  • @StefanLasiewski it's not so simple though. `.su` needs to transition to a different TLD or apply to be re-instated into ISO 3166-1. See: http://blog.icann.org/2007/09/the-lives-of-country-code-domains/ – faker Jan 19 '15 at 19:27
  • Oh I never said it was simple. But it's interesting. – Stefan Lasiewski Jan 19 '15 at 21:43
  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this a 100% political question. – Sven Jun 23 '18 at 15:49
  • While the political context is likely relevant and also off-topic in this case, the ICANN decision processes and standards are relevant and also on-topic. I think the balance is more to leave this question open, but if this question remains here, but as a closed one, is also a fair compromise. – peterh May 21 '19 at 15:58

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ICANN explains this pretty well in their blog (https://www.icann.org/news/blog/abkhazia-kosovo-south-ossetia-transnistria-my-oh-my):

As at this time, Abkhazia, Kosovo, Transnistria, Somaliland, South Ossetia and others are not in the ISO 3166-1 standard, so ICANN is not in a position to grant any corresponding country-code domain for them. By strictly adhering to the ISO 3166-1 standard, we ensure that ICANN remains neutral by relying upon a widely recognised and impartial international standard.

PF4Public
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Because Kosovo is not (fully) legally recognized. As a result it doesn't have a UN seat either.

Quite a political question for SF :)

smci
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    Actually, IANA try to stay *out* of politics by using ISO3166-1 Alpha-2 codes, which in turn are based on the list of statistically interesting regions of the UN statistics bureau and thus *independent* of any and all political considerations as to what exactly is and isn't a country. (A definition that's impossible, basically, a country is a country when it's recognized by other countries as a country.) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1#Criteria_for_inclusion – Jörg W Mittag Jan 19 '15 at 00:41
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    Quote: "The IANA is not in the business of deciding what is and what is not a country. The selection of the ISO 3166 list as a basis for country code top-level domain names was made with the knowledge that ISO has a procedure for determining which entities should be and should not be on that list.”— Jon Postel, RFC 1591 – Jörg W Mittag Jan 19 '15 at 00:42
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    Thanks @JörgWMittag - I said the question was political, not necessarily that the answer was. – smci Jan 19 '15 at 02:14
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The previous writers have already mention the fact that ISO only "copies" the country lists of the UN, to avoid poltical trouble. As an Albanian from Kosovo I'm following this kind of discussions for years.

Update: There are 3 criteria for inclusion into ISO 3166-1 and Kosovo meets two of them:

  • A member of one of its specialized agencies (International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group)
  • A party to the Statute of the International Court of Justice ( It is now)

The rest is bureaucratic gossip.

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