Tijani Ben Jemaa, ALAC Executive Committee member from the African Regional At-Large Organization (AFRALO), originally composed an initial draft of this Statement [150 KB, PDF] after discussion of the topic within AtLarge, both on ALAC conference calls, but also during a session taking place at the ICANN meeting in Dakar.
On 14 December 2011, this Statement was posted on the At-Large Geographic Regions Review Workspace.
On that same day, Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Chair of the ALAC, requested At-Large Staff to send a three-day call for comments on the draft Statement to all At-Large members via the ALAC-Announce Mailing List.
On 18 December 2011, a second version of the statement incorporating the comments received both by emails and also in the workspace was drafted. The resulting statement is presented here.
On 19 December 2011, the Chair of the ALAC requested that Staff open a five-day ALAC ratification vote on the Statement. The Chair also requested that the Statement be transmitted to the public comment process, copying the ICANN Staff member responsible for this public comment topic, along with a note saying that the document was currently undergoing ALAC ratification.
On 27 December 2011, the online vote resulted in the ALAC endorsing the statement with 12 votes in favor, 0 against, and 0 abstentions. You may review the result independently under: http://www.bigpulse.com/pollresults?code=2180mvjSrRcKgnD2gSpNAvFJ.