Western Sahara is a disputed territory, in turn it has no
country code top-level domain (
ccTLD), but
.eh is reserved for that purpose.
IANA 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, one of two provinces in the earlier
Spanish Sahara.
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.The doteh group homepage, formerly at doteh.org, is now gone and the domain has fallen into the hands of
cybersquatters Morocco, 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:<blockquote>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...
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