[cooperation-wg] Discuss ISO-3166 mark TAIWAN as a Provinces of China on the RIPE NCC website

Mr. Tsung-Yi Yu,



First, I would like to express my sincere sympathy for all those affected
by the earthquake in Taiwan today. My thoughts are with them and with the
first responders handling this crisis.

Now, to your message, thank you for reaching out and for suggesting ways to
address this sensitive topic. As the RIPE NCC is a neutral organisation,
determining the status of nations or their names is out of our scope. For
the purpose of assigning a country code to a resource holder (1), we use
the ISO 3166-1 list, which is the international standard. These codes are
assigned by the ISO 3166-1 Maintenance Agency based on the UN identifier
chosen by the UN Statistics Division.

Under ISO 3166-1 (2), Taiwan is listed as "TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA," with
the country code TW, which is reflected on our website in the List of
Country Codes and RIRs (3). We do not use the ISO 3166-2 codes, which have
more specific information about country subdivisions, such as provinces or
states, which is not relevant to our purposes. As to your suggestion that
we use the term “economy” when referring to Taiwan, we appreciate the
usefulness of this term in the APNIC region. However, we do not want to
start deviating from the ISO, as this would cause other inconsistencies in
our data.

You mention a need to consider both accuracy and respect. I fully agree
with you on the importance of these principles. This is precisely why we do
not get involved in geopolitical disputes by selecting one person’s
preferred terminology over another’s. Instead, we show our members equal
respect by relying on internationally defined standards. Any disagreements
over these standards should take place in the fora that create them, like
the UN. Furthermore, these international standards keep registration
information consistent across nations and organisations. This is what makes
it possible for us to uphold the accuracy of our database and other
services.

I hope that this has helped explain why we operate this way, as we
accommodate members from 76 countries in a service region experiencing
several active conflicts. Please let us know if you would like more
information about the ISO standards and how we use them.

Sincerely,

Hans Petter Holen

Managing Director and CEO

RIPE NCC


References:

1)
https://labs.ripe.net/author/kjerstin-burdiek/country-codes-in-the-ripe-database/
2) https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:TW
3)
https://www.ripe.net/membership/member-support/list-of-members/list-of-country-codes-and-rirs/

On Tue, 2 Apr 2024 at 02:53, SteveYi Yo <steveyiyo at steveyi.net> wrote:

> Hi Jaap,
>
> Thanks for sharing the official document! As far as I can see, it seems
> that the Short name is marked as TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA.
> https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:TW
>
> I will ask RIPE Support to check which ISO 3166 they implement, and back
> to here ASAP.
>
> Thank you!
>
> Best,
> Tsung-Yi Yu
>
> On Tue, Apr 2, 2024 at 3:37 AM Jaap Akkerhuis <jaap at nlnetlabs.nl> wrote:
>
>>  SteveYi Yo writes:
>>
>>  > ISO 3166-2 focuses on codes for country subdivisions, and it also
>>  > encompasses 'Country names'.
>>
>> It does not. It only lists the subdivisons of the entities mentioned
>> in ISO 3166-1
>>
>>  > The RIPE NCC website, however, does not
>>  > reference ISO 3166-2 explicitly; it only mentions ISO 3166.
>>
>> No, it (*) mentions 3166 but refers to 3166-1 explicitly.
>>
>> The wiki page you mention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2)
>> is not the official standard. apart from that, it says that ISO
>> 3166-2 "defines codes for identifying the principal subdivisions
>> (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1".
>>
>> For official information about ISO standards one should consult
>> iso.org itself. For country codes, see
>> <https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html> as as start.
>>
>>         jaap
>>
>> *
>> https://www.ripe.net/membership/member-support/list-of-members/list-of-country-codes-and-rirs/
>>
>>

-- 


-hph
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