Western Sahara

Western Sahara

Western Sahara is a disputed territory in North Africa, bordered by Morocco to the north, Algeria to the northeast, Mauritania to the east and south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Its surface area amounts to . It is one of the most sparsely populated territories in the world, mainly...

 is a disputed territory, in turn it has no country code

Country code

Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The best known of these is ISO 3166-1...

 top-level domain

Top-level domain

A top-level domain is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last label of a...

 (ccTLD), but .eh is reserved for that purpose. IANA

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority is the entity that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System , media types, and other Internet Protocol-related symbols and numbers...

 has no sponsoring organizations assigned to this domain.

These letters correspond to "Sáhara Español" (ESH, as Western Sahara was previously called Spanish Sahara) and also match Saguia el-Hamra

Saguia el-Hamra

Saguia el-Hamra, in Arabic الساقية الحمراء, al-Saqiyah al-Hamra'a , is, with Río de Oro, one of the two territories that formed the Spanish province of Spanish Sahara after 1969. Its name comes from a waterway that goes through the capital....

, one of two provinces in the earlier Spanish Sahara

Spanish Sahara

Spanish Sahara was the name used for the modern territory of Western Sahara when it was ruled as a territory by Spain between 1884 and 1975...

.

On August 1, 2007, an international consortium made a bid to the IANA to administer the .eh domain on behalf of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic is a partially recognised state that claims sovereignty over the entire territory of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony. SADR was proclaimed by the Polisario Front on February 27, 1976, in Bir Lehlu, Western Sahara. The SADR government controls about...

. Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

, an occupying power, has made competing claims to the domain.

On October 16, 2007, ICANN decided not to delegate .eh at all, with the explanation that:

there are currently two applicants for the delegation of the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .EH (Western Sahara). Both requests meet the technical criteria for managing a top-level domain. In cases like this, IANA has a long-standing policy of requesting that the two contesting applicants work together to find a mutual solution that will serve the needs of the local Internet community in the best possible fashion. ICANN does not see a way to approve the .EH ccTLD delegation to one of the applicants without violating its long-standing policy unless the contesting parties are able to reach an agreement.

The two applicants remain armed belligerents; no such agreement has been reached and the domain remains inactive.